For ten years I wrote at least one short story a week, somehow guessing that a day would finally come when I got out of the way and let it happen…Ten years of doing everything wrong suddenly became the right idea…

I hasten to add here that imitation is natural and necessary to the beginning writer. In the preparatory years, a writer must select that field where he thinks his ideas will develop comfortably…Work and imitation go together in the process of learning. It is only when imitation outruns its natural function that a man prevents his becoming truly creative. After millions of words of imitation, when I was twenty-two years old I suddenly made the breakthrough…

(Drunk, and in charge of a Bicycle) (Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing)