I’m currently reading Ray Bradbury’s collected correspondence. In between wishing the compiler got more of his responses from Leigh Brackett (she’s hilarious!) and sobbing messy tears over the very idea of a literary agent for short stories, I found this little gem:
… Last weekend, in a great burst of enthusiasm, and energy, completely at ease with my techniques and thus unaware of them, I wrote six short stories in a period of 40 hours. From Saturday night until Monday morning… – Ray Bradbury in a letter to Bernard Berenson, December 12, 1954
My response was exactly what you’d expect from an ardent fan and fellow-writer: THAT BASTARD. How dare he?
Of course, all creative workers know the beauty of flow state, of “The zone.” Heck, I even get it (rarely) while programing. Those moments when it comes easily, when the answer to each question pops into your head just when you need it, and it feels like you are doing the best work of your life.
I also know you can’t force flow state. You can become better at being open to it by working through uninspiring, slogging, ordinary days. Still, six story drafts in one weekend?!? This was clearly a challenge directly to ME.
“I don’t have any plans this weekend,” I said. “Game on, Ray.” I vowed to write six short story drafts in under 40 hours.
Friday, I made myself a folder inside my Short Stories > Write-a-Thon folder titled “Six-Weekend” and I made six blank word documents in it. Then I remembered that Ray hadn’t started until Saturday and anyway, I wanted to go to the Open Mic at Literary Cleveland.
I went to the open mic. It was fun, but I suffered from failed-to-bring-fidget-stuff. Oh to have brought a notebook to take notes! I ended up writing extensively on my phone, something I am not prone to do, being an old lady who can’t type on a mobile device worth beans.
I got home late from the evening of poetry and prose and transferred my phone-notes to my diary with frantic passion. So many ideas! I was confident I’d get up early and hit the ground composing.
Saturday… not so much. I got up at the crack of noon and promptly decided to make pancakes from scratch for the family. I improvised a dairy-free recipe for the lactose intolerant kid and it almost worked? (They came out a little dense and yeasty.)
Then I played a little Animal Crossing… and realized I was procrastinating. I got out my journal. Writing in my journal is a technique I often use to get moving. I didn’t want to still be writing on Monday, when I had to be at work, so I had to get started on this forty-hour thing.
Bradbury talked about being in a state of “euphoria” as he wrote, unselfconscious.
I wrote, “To write quickly, ideally, I will write unselfconsciously, get out of my own way. Yet I want to do some structures! Establish, complicate, twist, resolve. I don’t really think I can do this. I suppose that’s why I’m trying. Started Ship Breakers. It’s the one foremost in my mind, I won’t be able to move until it is cleared from my path.”
Story 1: Ship Breakers
I had read an article about cargo ship workers being abandoned, unpaid, at sea. (This shit is happening!) I could never imagine a more anti-capitalist situation for my frequent worker-uprising writings. I just had to set it in space!
I looked up the crew compliment on a cargo ship, how long the average cruise was, how much they were paid, and even poked around a recruitment website that was FAR too shiny. I wrote about 700 words of notes, including relevant facts from the above-linked article. Then I saw it was 1pm, and I was supposed to be at my friend Ann’s birthday party at 4.
So I took a nap.
Story 2: A Story in the Form of Titles from Unfinished Poems
Kidding! I started another idea – someone had a poem at the Open Mic which was titled “List Poem in the Form of Poem Titles” and I had also had a writing assignment recently in my MFA class to try writing a story in all chapter titles. The hard part would be to have it feel authentically like titles, but also actually TELL a story. The poet’s title poem was about processing loss.
I opened my “Poetry” folder and picked out titles, arranging them until I had something resembling a story. A theme was easy to come up with – naval-gazing, and guilt over naval-gazing. I started it off: “Middle-class White Girl with No Real Problems Blues. Preparing for Work. Ode to a Procrastination.” When I felt I’d farmed all the content I could from my poetry drafts, I made up a few titles to fill it out.
Fun, and sorta counted as a story, so I posted a success to Bluesky and took a nap until the party.
Story 3: The Handmaiden’s Corpse
At the party, I felt guilty not to be working on my six stories. I sat in a corner for a little bit and wrote notes and plans. In the car, I was listening to a biography of an Egyptologist, and it got me thinking: What if the Ancient Egyptians were right? What if the mummies were living it up in an afterlife with all their worldly goods, then the tomb robbing starts and suddenly their jewelry goes missing, then their cat, then their liver and heart?
When I got home from the party, I wrote the mummy story rather quickly, making her a handmaiden, second fiddle all her life to the princess, then she gets all the goodies when she wakes up in a museum. It was short and sweet and had a plot? I knew I’d have to go back and fatten it up.
Story 4: The Descendants
What if aliens came to Earth after hearing our EM broadcasts only to find we’d died out and the rats took over? Alien POV or Rat POV? I dickered around writing outlines. Lots of telling, no showing. In frustration I pasted in a passage from “Multitude” that I thought did it better. Hey, they’re my words, I can re-use them. Starting with the Multitude aliens made it make sense to me. I had this alien mind I already knew, I opened with them questing to find humans. Then I wrote a second part where, instead of what happens in Multitude, they find, well, rats. I wanted this to feel bittersweet, charming, even, that the aliens and rats would bond over the glory of the absent us. Not sure I achieved that, but at least it had a beginning, middle, and end?
Ship Breakers?
For the next hour, I poked at “Ship Breakers”, frustrated, outlining and outlining, going back over my notes. This was NOT effortless, in-the-zone writing. I didn’t want to choose a male or female main character, so I made them non-binary. I came up with a non-gendered name. I started calling them “him” and had to edit those out.
I tried the “Hemingway method” at this point, meaning I poured myself a double shot of scotch in the hopes it would lubricate my thought processes.
Story 5: For the Love
I shelved “Ship Breakers” again and took up another old idea of mine – to use FTL to re-capture lost television episodes of Dr. Who. I started writing with the title “For the Love” – ha! FTL, get it?
Then I stared at the screen, brain screeching static. I picked a name from my list of cool names, Mandee, and wrote a sentence like “Mandee loved Dr. Who more than anything.” No, start in action. “Mandee walked into the research building…”
Nothing worked. I hated what I was doing, deleted it all, and re-started it as if writing the research proposal. “One of the unexpected and delightful consequences of breaking the light barrier is our ability to chase down signals sent into space by our ancestors. This boon to archeology cannot be ignored…”
It didn’t “flow” per se, but I was able to chug forward on that, quickly inventing a problem, a jealous fellow post-doc threatening to expose the less-than-noble secret reason for the project. I kept wondering “Do research projects work like that?” and then shaking my head and pressing onward, anyway. I was tired and tipsy and it was no time for lengthy research.
I got three story drafts done yesterday but I'm not happy with them. I'm not flowing. It's clunky. Lots of telling not showing. First draft problems. Six stories in 40 hours works out to about six hours a story. Today I will rush less. Let it flow. #sixpackweekend
— Marie Vibbert (@reasie.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Sunday morning, some time around that blue sky post, I wrote in my diary, “I have roughly 4-5 stories done, but I think 2 of them are cheating, [the poem titles and the rats, because I re-used words] and they all need work. Still, if I can finish Ship Breakers and First Chicken, I’ll call it a win.”
I had opened another of my blank documents and written the title “First Chicken Stand on Mars.” Then I saved and closed it. I was procrastinating. Procrastinating so hard that I voluntarily mopped the kitchen, living room, and dining room!
Story 6: The Soldier and the Cashier
Rejuvenated by exercise and a cold shower (I used up all the hot water mopping! DOH!) I decided to cheat again by working on my thesis. “Hey,” I said to myself, “I intended this Multitude thing to read like a series of short stories, anyway. And I wanted to add a new chapter!” I copied the line from my outline into a fresh word document.
Ross gets two weeks off on leave to see his girlfriend, Gabrielle, The Cashier, and we see mankind fighting back against the aliens.
Then I wrote:
Setup
Develop
Twist
Resolve
I hit return after “Setup” and started writing a description of Ross arriving in Cleveland, which was kinda boring. I should skip ahead to him seeing his girlfriend. Then I got annoyed and said, “Why do it in HIS POV anyway?” and changed it to Gabrielle picking him up, annoyed by traffic and his insistence on not taking the RTA. No one would pick HER up at the airport.
I was in the scene, with tension from Gabrielle’s annoyance. That flowed better. But wait… where was I in the general story? I had to go back and look at my outline. Oops… this airport pick up couldn’t be business as usual during an ALIEN INVASION.
It wasn’t euphoric, it was work, but I felt more comfortable in the established mode of the novel I’ve been working on all month. I already knew the characters. I wrote back and forth, changing the meeting after I wrote their conversation in the car, adjusting things as I took frequent breaks to help my husband set up for Game Night.
(Yes, my “totally free weekend” included an open mic, a birthday party, and hosting a game night. I have a very strange idea of free time.)
Interlude: Reading
I decided that I needed to stop what I was doing and re-read some Bradbury stories. A quick google got me a half-dozen free on the internet, and I quickly was going, “Oh! THIS one!” and “I forgot this was Bradbury!” and “OH, this is just like that OTHER story of his. Yeah, not above re-using things are we?”
This was helpful.
I took a break to move the furniture back from the mopping, and I broke a nail below the quick. OW. I had to put a bandaid on my bleeding fingertip.
I sat down to write again around 4pm, dispirited, hopeless, and lacking the ability to easily use my touchpad. Darn finger bandaids!
Story 7: The First Chicken Joint on Mars
I see from my journal my plans were, “I’m going to write Chicken Joint in a Bradbury style – all details, shown without comment. It’s a lot more fun than plotting! Ugh. Ship Breakers is all plot, plot plot. But it’s a first draft. FTL was fun in comparison. His [Bradbury’s] whole point was the joy, the self-trust. I am not trusting myself.”
I’d had this idea lurking in my head from a dream I’d had back in December – an automated chicken joint on Mars. I decided to write it like “There Will Come Soft Rains” all from the point of view of the machinery.
It… flowed. It was fun. Euphoric, even. I didn’t have to try at all, and it was by far the best story attempt.
On the strength of afterglow, I went back to Ship Breakers and banged out the ugliest, baldest ending I could. I let myself tell, tell, tell, knowing I’d have an easier time revising this in the next draft with all the decisions made.
Success?
9pm Sunday, I declared success. 7 drafts of thingies in 32 hours. (1pm Saturday- 9pm Sunday). I logged off and walked the dog.
You can decide if I deserve to call it a win. The poem-title list story isn’t going to win any awards. I might have to market it as a poem if I want to sell it. And at about 4,000 words, Ship Breakers is ROUGH and I think needs to be more like 8,000 words to contain all its action and characters sensibly.
I think I shall have to do this again. Um… a long, long time from now.
I spent much of the weekend feeling like a slacker with a head of clay, but for about one hour there, as I wrote “Chicken Joint,” I succeeded in achieving that euphoric state when you can’t help but create. And that was worth the trouble.
