Ideas Like Cats!
Mitch Tuchman interviewed Ray Bradbury in 1982 and published it in Film Comment, Vol. 18 ISS. 6, Nov/Dec 1982 under the title "Bradbury Shooting Haiku in a Barrel”. Bradbury used the article in his book “Zen in the Art of Writing” as part of a collection of his own writings on writing.
In the last exchange between the two men, Tuchman asked Bradbury if he wasn’t interested in taking the step into directing films. Bradbury talked about how he didn’t want to “handle that many people” and went on to outline how actors presented a variety of problems and how it was too difficult to get them all in the same flow of the script. The article concludes with the following exchange:
Tuchman, “Your characters never present those problems?”
Bradbury, “Never. I never put with anything from my ideas.”
Tuchman, “You just slap them into place?”
Bradbury, “As soon as things get difficult, I walk away. That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cast: you make them follow you. If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won’t let you do it. You’ve got to say, ‘Well, to hell with you.’ And the cast says, ‘Wait a minute. He’s not behaving the way most humans do.’ Then the cast follows you out of curiosity: ‘Well, what’s wrong with you that you don’t love me?’
Well, that’s what an idea is. See? You just say, ‘Well, hell, I don’t need depression. I don’t need worry. I don’t need to push.’ The ideas will follow me. When they’re off-guard, and ready to be born, I’ll turn around and grab them.”
I have been giving this exchange between Mitch Tuchman and Ray Bradbury a lot of thought over the last couple of days because it resonates with me, not necessarily in good and warm and fuzzy ways. I think it is a grand idea and I would love to wrap Bradbury’s method up in a big old bear hug to take for my own but I have problems with it.
I have no problem with the first sentence of his final reply, I walk away from my projects all the time. Being creative is difficult for those of us who don’t practice enough. Since I do not particularly like cats (I am a reformed birder), when I treat an idea like a cat I tend to walk away and close the office door. Ideas tend to stalk me like the neighborhood’s loose cats stalk the birds I feed, then pounce on me and tear the feathers from me before devouring me.
I get ideas all the time then jot down a reminder for a time later to sit down and write it. My little notebooks are full of ideas I’ve had but never grabbed them and written them into submission, mine, or the idea’s submission. Either way would be an improvement. Really, letting the idea finally have its way with me would be best. The idea coming from deep in my consciousness is way better than anything that I’ve sat down and thought up.
It takes discipline to put aside urgent things, important or unimportant, and sit down to write instead. Every time I get around to writing a piece, like I’m writing this one, the hope springs up that this time will be the one that opens the floodgates for me to write every single day.
Hope springs eternal. Like Elis Boyd “Red” Redding said in The Shawshank Redemption, “I hope.”
jj white
