After reading a book by Ray Bradbury, this author was inspired to change course and start on the novel he truly wanted to write.

by Brad C. Anderson

I almost stopped writing after my first book was published.

In 2019, after years of self-publishing, studying the craft, finding my voice, and writing late in the evening, Bundoran Press published my novel, Duatero. After writing for the better part of a decade, success!

I love writing. Stories have always pulled at my mind, drawing my attention away from sitting in traffic or boring meetings. But to have a company publish my work was validating. Someone besides my mom (hi, Mom) liked my writing enough to put time, effort, and money into bringing it to the world. I dared to think that through my art, I could touch people and leave a mark, no matter how humble. Maybe I could make a go of this writing thing.

I had a second book, Ashme’s Song, all lined up and ready to fall on the heels of my debut. It was a powerful, meaningful story. I shopped it around to agents and publishers, first for weeks, then for months, and eventually years. Dozens (and dozens) of rejections found their way to my inbox. So many no thank yous! It felt like high school prom all over again. I believe I can write well—reviews of my first book were generally positive. The story of Ashme’s Song was, I felt, relevant and topical. But, sweet lord, I simply could not get a nibble of interest in it.

That’s when I started getting in my head.

If you’ve written a novel, you know how hard it is. Balancing work, life, and writing is a struggle. With the time I have available to write, it takes me years to produce a book I am proud of. To pour my passions into something, only to receive a litany of “Sorry, this isn’t for us,” hurt. Whereas once I wrote for the joy of creating something, it suddenly seemed an immense waste to spend months and years of my free time to produce something that would die parched and alone, buried by the sands of anonymity. I get that publishing is a tough racket, and hearing no is far more common than hearing yes, but to be a successful writer, you need someone to say yes at some point, right?

Whereas once I wrote for the joy of creating something, it suddenly seemed a waste of time to produce something that would die parched and alone, buried by the sands of anonymity.

So, I started writing for the market. What’s hot? What’s on trend? How can I create a story about that issue? And when I did that, writing became … painful. Whereas writing had been a calling, it became a chore. I gave up trying to sell Ashme’s Song while abandoning one work-in-progress after another. As I stared at my blank screen, I considered giving up the craft.

Ray Bradbury saved me. “What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds?” he asks in Zen in the Art of Writing. “In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth, which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.” Throughout Zen in the Art of Writing, he describes writing as a thing of passion: something fun, something that flows from you, a tempest washing ashore. Get out of your head and into your heart.

I swept all my works-in-progress off the desk and began writing the story in my heart, a novel I had sidelined as I felt it wasn’t my style nor on trend. But it is fun. My current work-in-progress is a cross between Mad Max, Dune, and Conan the Barbarian. For the Dungeons & Dragons nerds active in the 1990s, it was inspired by my love for the Dark Sun campaign setting. Now, if I find myself in the middle of a scene and the writing starts to feel like work, I delete it and write something fun. And if the sands of anonymity end up burying it, no regrets. It is a story I want to read, and that’s enough.

What about Ashme’s Song? I had fun writing it. It was an important story to tell. Ray Bradbury’s advice gave me the confidence to once more set sail into the sea of rejections in search of that one yes. Eventually, I found it. Shadowpaw Press will publish it in late 2024/early 2025.

So, what lessons can I give from this experience? Publishing is tough. If you write for a living, you need to write stories an audience is willing to pay for. But what you do with your time should be fun. If it feels like grinding over broken glass, you’re probably going in the wrong direction.

Get out of your head and into your heart.

Brad C. Anderson lives with his wife and puppy in Vancouver, Canada. He teaches undergraduate business courses at a local university and researches organizational wisdom in blithe defiance of the fact most people do not think you can put those two words in the same sentence without irony. Previously, Brad worked in the biotech sector, where he made drugs for a living (legally!). His stories have appeared in a variety of publications. His short story “Naïve Gods” was longlisted for a 2017 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. It was published in the anthology Lazarus Risen, which was itself nominated for an Aurora Award.