Pete’s mom gave me a book about creative writing by Ray Bradbury. I’ve always liked his writing, and his advice feels so encouraging and accessible.
Later I came across this quote from him “I’ll give you a program to follow every night, a very simple program…one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them…But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay—at the end of a thousand nights, Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff, won’t you?”
I found a poetry site that sends daily poems via email- check. I’m still trying to figure out the best place to get short stories that I want to read. And as to the essays- I’ve been looking at magazines I don’t normally read in the library’s Libby app. I haven’t been consistent with any of the three yet, but every time I am, I feel that my brain is happier.
So since I wrote this today, I feel like I can’t skip reading all three. I grabbed a book of essays and a book of short stories at the library. So today’s reading was:
Poem: Kissing the Opelu by Donovan Kūhiō Colleps
Essay: When We Were Boys by Ciara Alfaro
Short Story: Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
I feel like I should write a little about my reactions to each piece but maybe I’ll just leave it at they were all good and made me think. Stuffed my head properly.
I do want to say that Rip Van Winkle had an awful lot of misogyny- almost comically so. So it was a bit of a drag to get through but I kept thinking of Breaking Bread With the Dead (which Pete wrote about last year) which helped reframe the story.
Am I going to add this reading challenge to my journalling challenge? I can’t resist a streak. Only 999 more nights to go!
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