The Call of Inspiration, the Shadow of Doubt

When you want to write fiction, you can sometimes get lost in the struggle to find a subject. Then everything starts to seem absurd and meaningless, and the last shred of inspiration slips away. You resort to desperate procrastination or wander a few more streets in your mind, knocking on the door of other dreams.

It will be a rare discourse, but this time I am not on the side of the victim. On the contrary, after a long break, I started the new month more sociable and creative. I was surprised myself, of course, but I enjoyed it very much. The reason for this is my relationship with the stories in the book I am reading.

I realised that I hadn't read Ray Bradbury, one of my favourite authors, since the beginning of last year. Instead of feeling the bitterness of that, I read his newly translated book (A Medicine for Melancholy), which consists of 30 stories.

In the book, which I am only halfway through, each story is an average of 12-13 pages long. Thanks to this, I can always take a break and spend time thinking about it. But I am reading something very different from the dozens of Bradbury books I have read. So I can say that I have a strange feeling.

The master writer, if you don't know, is someone who can take stories from different genres and do them justice. He has literary, poetic, fantastic, science-fictional works, as well as his everyday, easy-to-understand, simple-looking stories. He is a versatile writer, yes, but the main factor that puts him at the top is his ability to succeed in any genre.

As he is a writer I have respected and looked up to for years, I naturally make sure I read him carefully (perhaps you do the same with your favourites). I try to push the boundaries of what I can get out of his stories. Whether such an approach makes sense or not, I can understand at the end of each story.

Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash

Although I have said that I have started February efficiently, there is, of course, one issue that is always on my mind and challenging me. Hesitations and doubts about the choice of story topics and their quality/appeal.

What writers like Vonnegut and Hemingway, whom I have mentioned on occasion, and Bradbury have in common is that they prefer simplicity. Although it may seem easy for successful writers to say this and incorporate it into their work, I believe it is difficult even for them. However, I am pretty sure that there are points that take them a few steps forward.

When I finish each story, I summarise it in my head and think about it. It's not something I normally do, but as I said, in the case of Bradbury it's an endeavour I've undertaken a little. Remembering the story, checking important details, trying to analyse the subtext, trying to grasp what the author's purpose was in writing this story is actually easy to say, but very difficult to do.

I realised that I had a common confusion in almost every story. I shared this with some friends and tried to understand what they were thinking from the outside. Although the stories seem extremely simple, I can assure you that I would never think of using any of them in my stories. I probably repeated the question "Why did he write about such a subject?" after every 10 pages. That was my biggest surprise.

I had previously read a book (Zen in the Art of Writing) about how he approaches his own art of writing (which I was apparently supposed to read in order to remember it), and since then I know what kind of approach he actually takes when he writes and chooses his subjects. However, there is a big difference between knowing this and experiencing it every time through his stories. He both delivers what he describes in the book and continues to surprise me, even though I know what he is going to do. I guess that's what a real writer is like.

The second point is that he can give a feeling outside the formula.

Yes, you may have come across some familiar templates when you started out as a writer. These are not only effective but also efficient in direct proportion to the quality of the writer. This may be why we feel we can do exactly the same thing when our examples are usually based on famous and successful writers.

The personal style we develop over time, the genres and related themes we like to focus on, the other works of art we look to for reference, and the boldness that comes with a sense of freedom all push us to make our work as original as possible.

Of course, I build a sense of belonging by preferring to have my ideas processed as little as possible (which is actually harder to know than we think). To do this, we actually compare ourselves. When we say, 'He wrote it this way, so I should write it this way', we are making comparisons with the already existing other, and we may involuntarily break away from our main thoughts. Even if we are inspired, we prevent that too.

I can swear that Bradbury did not experience this. Because, as I said, the subjects he writes about always arouse our curiosity and make us question. But he can also go off the beaten track. In the story, you get an expectation, you think, 'I think our character is going to hit an obstacle,' but he doesn't. How am I supposed to see the development of the character, why is everything going on as if it was business as usual?' you ask, you wonder. But there comes a moment that destroys everything you know. It makes you careful when you ask the same questions in the next story. He can hold you in the palm of his hand with the way he writes.

I feel like Bradbury is saying, 'I show the limits of literature in what I write. Instead of sticking to a textbook, I take every idea that pops into my head, mix it with the experiences of my life and turn it into a story without finding it absurd or irrelevant. And that is exactly what he does. He offers us writings that advise us to value our thoughts that we find absurd. So many ideas came to me when I went to bed that I didn't care about in the morning, but in the end I threw almost all of them away.

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It is very difficult to read the minds of writers. But they inevitably give us clues through their stories. Their way of thinking as human beings, their style shaped by their rebellious spirit as writers, and the culture of opposition at the heart of art allow them to reveal their originality. It is fun and exhausting to follow this process, but I think it is also very educational.

It is not just luck that Bradbury and masters like him are still being thought about and read after all these years. Nor can the astonishment I felt at the end of each story be explained by blind devotion or exaggeration.