What does each noun mean?

Here's Ray Bradbury on writing in a conversation with Paris Review. His advice reminds me of Lynda Barry's exercises in What It Is. I wonder if Barry knew the interview or if the two writers were just thinking along on the same, marvelous cosmic wave length.

"Three things are in your head: First, everything you have experienced from the day of your birth until right now. Every single second, every single hour, every single day. Then, how you reacted to those events in the minute of their happening, whether they were disastrous or joyful. Those are two things you have in your mind to give you material. Then, separate from the living experiences are all the art experiences you’ve had, the things you’ve learned from other writers, artists, poets, film directors, and composers. So all of this is in your mind as a fabulous mulch and you have to bring it out. How do you do that? I did it by making lists of nouns and then asking, What does each noun mean? You can go and make up your own list right now and it would be different than mine. The night. The crickets. The train whistle. The basement. The attic. The tennis shoes. The fireworks. All these things are very personal. Then, when you get the list down, you begin to word-associate around it. You ask, Why did I put this word down? What does it mean to me? Why did I put this noun down and not some other word? Do this and you’re on your way to being a good writer. You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief. You have to write the way you see things. I tell people, Make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them. When I wrote Fahrenheit 451 I hated book burners and I loved libraries. So there you are."


I really like this--the clarity and practicality. There's something even kind of American in the commitment to things, stuff, nouns as the starting point for a task so elusive and intangible as writing. Some day soon I'm going to clear a few days from my schedule and actually write creatively the way I used to do in college (happy non-academic moments wedged in between paper-writing and exam studying--and I thought I was oh-so-busy then. Ha!).