gullybogan

Dear Reader,

According to Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury’s reflection on the craft that he was so prolific at, it cost him nine dollars and eighty cents – in dimes – to write The Fire Man, a novella that ultimately became Fahrenheit 451.

He wrote it in the basement Typewriting Room of the Library of UCLA, where they had Remingtons and Underwoods you could hire – coin in slot – for ten cents a half hour.

That restriction of time – a dime was a lot of money back then – focussed his mind marvellously, and he hammered his story out so fast that he would often jam the machine, a counter-productive outcome. He would slam the story down, whipping pages in and out of the roller, trying to get his ideas down before the dime dropped.

As we know, dear Reader, writing the work is only ten percent of the effort. Fifteen percent is editing, and the balance is promotion.

But more on that in a later post.

Typewriter For Hire

What was Bradbury doing writing his stories in the basement of the UCLA Library?

Well, for a start, what better place than a university library to write about a Future in which the burning of books is a government initiative?

But the real reason was that he was hounded out of his home by his children.

He used to type in a spare room, and then in a garage, when the arrival of children made the spare room somewhat less spare.

But he soon found that little faces would appear at the window of the garage, blowing little kisses and singing little songs.

Given the choice between writing about dinosaur hunters and Martian explorers, or playing with his kids, he plumped for the kids every time.

Which, for someone who earnt his living from writing, wasn’t a good choice.

Thus the basement.

Duel Core

In my studio, we now have two computers.

One is this one i’m on now, a 2002 model that cost me about nine dollars and eighty cents, and the other is a bright and shiny dual core entertainment centre that thumps out bassy music, plays widescreen DVDs, and receives HD digital TV.

Our actual lounge room entertainment system pales by comparison. I suspect most teenage kids have a better set up in their bedroom (or possibly in their pocket) than we have in our front room.

Naturally, the other machine is often in use by other members of the household who will remain nameless.

It’s a little hard to concentrate on my prattlings in here (by which i mean in my computer) with Season Two of The IT Crowd chuckling away two metres to my right.

Whereas Bradbury could have theoretically picked up his own Remington and sat in some cafe somewhere, it’s a little harder to pick up twenty kilograms of outdated PC equipment and lug it out in search of some promiscuous power point somewhere.

Laptop Dances

I keep meaning to buy an EEEPC, but that would mean that my inane scribbling would end up costing me something like fifty times what it cost Ray Bradbury to write one of the major science fiction novels of the twentieth century.

And i’m not sure i’m up to that sort of comparison.

Maybe i could just buy some earplugs.

Do you have a room of your own, dear Reader, for your writing and reading, or are you like Ray Bradbury and slumming it in a basement or garage somewhere?

I’m not stalking you, i’m just curious.

Yours,
Gullybogan