Review Of Youtube Video

I recently viewed Ray Bradbury on Writing Persistently video on YouTube.

  I periodically scour the internet looking for videos and such content within the writing world.

 I found this video out of the thousands of others because it looked interesting and shame me not but older people seem to be the wisest of the bunch. I really had little interest in some twenty or thirty year old giving me tips on writing, I know I’m just an awful person. I clicked on the video expecting something merely likable enough to say it was not so bad. Oh was I ever in for a surprise ! Initially he spoke about as a young writer he sent in short stories after story then kept getting rejected but his ego kept it all alive.  Then you look back when you gain some maturity and realize the stuff wasn’t all that great.  This part wasn’t the fascinating part as many other writers have said this before. He was finally begun selling stuff but something was missing, he wasn’t satisfied with his writing.  The part that was so fascinating was when spoke of writing and selling “The Lake.”  His work his often a metaphor of his life in some way he stated.  When he was younger he was playing with a girl at the beach around age eight, she went in the water and never came back.  This obviously traumatized him so much where that precious little girl stayed with him enough to write something loosely based on it.  He goes on to tell the story of how “The Lake” ended; how at the beach there is a sandcastle built and she was there at one point. After he wrote that one he was satisfied and proud of this work. It seems because he had actually been writing for him. 

I can honestly say I have never been so blown away by a message that an author was trying to convey. I think a lot of times what happens are that writers get swept in a phenomenon of writing for the market because that is what sells.  Writers stop writing for them is when trouble starts brewing us all shouldn’t strive to be carbon copies of King, Meyer or Rowling because they are the highest paid. We should write persistently and hone our own style for ourselves first then the market just might call for it. 

Writing is an art as all art it should be individualized and meant to express the creativity of the artist first. When people start to just pen out anything with no depth because people want it, this kills the beauty of the craft.  The story of “The Lake” was incredibly beautiful and personal I’ll take that over a wizard on a broomstick or a sparkling vampire anyway.  The bottom line is that we should be satisfied and persistent in writing with our own voice because we aren’t happy with it; why should the readers be?