Last week, as I was writing a story for my internship, my supervisor came into the room and said,” Did you hear the bad news?”
My first thought was, “Oh crap, what did I do?”
My supervisor informed me Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Martian Chronicles,” had died.
As science fiction enthusiasts and nerds, we were both saddened that a great writer had passed.
I Googled him and found he had written 27 novels and more than 600 short stories in his 91 years of life.
As an aspiring author myself, I have no novels or short stories under my belt, aside from articles The BG News.
“Fahrenheit 451” was the first book I was required to read in high school that I actually enjoyed and “The Martian Chronicles” was the book that got me interested in writing science fiction (even though he categorizes it as fantasy) ever since I picked it up in a secondhand book store last summer.
The first time I realized I wanted to be a writer was around age 7 when I wrote a zombie story inspired by the video game Resident Evil.
Of course, it was horribly misspelled and
written, but that didn’t stop me.
In sixth grade, I began writing a fantasy story where all the mythological creatures in Greece began warring against the humans.
It took me two years to write roughly 135 pages in a wide-ruled, five subject notebook, for a story I had no clue where I was going with as I wrote it.
I never finished that story, partly because it’s horrible, but it was a good step toward commitment.
Ray Bradbury’s death made me realize I need to get my rear end in gear if I want to be a novelist.
Currently, I have a folder on my laptop titled, “Writings, Scripts and Ideas” that contains a bunch of plot outlines and started stories, but I’ve never finished any.
However, judging by the conversations I’ve had with a few other writers, I’m not the only one with unfinished stories.
I don’t know what holds me back as a writer, whether it’s lack of motivation, writer’s block or figuring out how to fill plot holes, but as many writers have said, “if you want to be a writer, just write.”
I’ll have to learn to push through, and not make excuses for not writing, one day and just do it.
Nothing is holding me back but myself.
I’d love to publish a short story before I graduate and I feel I have a decent story in the making, I just need to … well, write the darn thing.
Ray Bradbury said, “You must write every single day of your life.” Well I suggest we start doing that.
To non-writers, you can apply this to whatever you want to do. Just do it.
Don’t let anything hold you back.
Right now, this column is holding me back from writing another story for the paper so I’m done here.
Read something else now.
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