Heh, here it is the end of the year (almost), and twice in one day I’m posting video clips. This one’s from over at the Skinner, Neal Asher’s website. Back in 2001 Ray Bradbury, a certified master story teller, was recorded giving a guest lecture on the art of writing. Watching him walk out on stage, I had a flashback to something that I had long since forgotten. I remembered watching the Ray Bradbury Theater when I was a lad, and then his opening narrative rushed back into the void that is my brain. The camera would pan around a dimly lit office space, his desk covered in stacks of books and papers, random toys like dinosaurs and spaceshipssurrounding his blue typewriter. In the voiceover, he’d say “People ask, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ Right here. All of this is my magician’s toy shop…” (OK, thanks to youtube for a random posting that included it 😉 )
BAM! I realized with a start that this is where the desire to be a writer stemmed from. Sure, its been inspired and pushed over the years by reading some of the crap that is getting published and thinking “Cripes, I could do better than that!”, but it was those 40 seconds of video that stuck with me as “that’s the life for me!”
Now, at least one reader out there will recall a Spider-Man spiral notebook I used to write things in when I was eight or nine – phooey, I still say it was seeing the intro to that show that solidified it for me. I mean, here was a grown man, with a desk I could live up to, telling stories for a living inspired by whatever he happened to be looking at. Who doesn’t want some of that?
OK, go watch the lecture if you want, I understand. Its just shy of an hour long, but was a good watch (or in my case, background while I worked today).
You should take a little search around You Tube with writers, authors, etc in the search. One little treasure-house can be found with ‘The Book Show Sky Arts’.
Thanks 🙂 I used to avoid youtube, but I think its finally hit a critical mass where its already got all of the sophomoric videos it can contain, finally leaving room for stuff worth watching (yeah, strikes me as I say this your videos are going on there too – ack).