If Irving Stone opened my understanding of the creative process, Ray Bradbury kindled my power and joy of writing. Imagine my joy and awe in not just meeting him and talking with him, but standing next to him ready to assist during a book signing. Reading Bradbury is never a passive act. I watched literally generations of families come to meet their literary hero. The grandfather introducing his hero to his grandson, the father reminiscing with his son in tow. Hundreds of people waited hours, all eyes staring at the man who released their imaginations and set them soaring. Today Bradbury's essay on "The Joy of Writing" found in Zen in the Art of Writing is another annual reading ritual. If, through the reading of words, one soul can touch another, then those pages witnessed my collision.

“Great writers are children of the gods,” writes Bradbury in his famous essay. “Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind.” These writers lived their work, they had fun, knew joy. “When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like lightning bolt?” he yells. “This afternoon burn down the house. Tomorrow pour cold critical water upon the simmering coals. But today — explode — fly apart — disintegrate!”

Bradbury demands writers to write with passion. Easy enough for him, his loves are visible. They saturate his being and illuminate his soul. He doesn’t tap into his passions — they explode from within and scatter across the page. He loves life. His ardor knows no bounds. Writing about his passions is second nature; he cannot help but do so. His exuberance for life and his unexcused love for writing is a siren’s song. “Find your twins," he urges, no matter where in life they reside. Where do your passions intersect? That’s the point where the spark will fire and illuminate your soul.

Bradbury unabashedly scrolls across the genres from playwright to screenwriter, storyteller to short story writer, essayist to novelist. Writing is his playground. Like a joyful Johnny Appleseed, the age-old Bradbury skips across cultural landscapes planting seeds within the fertile grounds of his essays and shorts stories and moves on. He trusts good fruit will follow. Every day Ray Bradbury pushes me to unabashedly grab my pen or pull the keyboard forward excited, even trembling, ready to create the next story, essay, or novel. I must embrace work that moves and invigorates me.