Reading Exercise of the Week #1: The Bradbury Trio

Every day this week try to read:

One short story
One poem
One essay

The inspiration for this way of reading came from Ray Bradbury.

In his keynote address to The Sixth Annual Writers Symposium in 2001 and in his wonderful biography and meditation on the craft of writing, Zen in the Art of Writing, my favourite science fiction writer of all time laid out a reading program for budding writers:

I’ll give you a programme to follow every night. Very simple programme. For the next thousand nights, before you go to bed every night, read one short story. That will take you ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Then read one poem a night from all the vast history of poetry. Stay away from most modern poetry. It’s crap. It’s not poetry. […] Read the great poets. Go back and read Shakespeare, read Alexander Pope, read Robert Frost. But one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night for the next one thousand nights.

Ray Bradbury goes on to recommend many turn-of-the-century writers we should read. He recommends the writings of Guy de Maupassant, Edith Wharton, Nathanial Hawthorne, Aldous Huxley, and many more.

He warns us away from modern writings:

Stay away from most modern anthologies of short stories because they’re slices of life. They don’t go anywhere. They don’t have any metaphor. Have you looked at The New Yorker recently? Have you tried to read one of those stories? Didn’t it put you to sleep immediately? They don’t know how to write short stories. Go read Washington Irving. Go read the short stories of Melville. Go read Edgar Allen Poe again.

Bradbury talks about how writers and creatives need to stuff their heads with a wide selection of great writings every night. We should read from the vast history of poetry. We should read stories with powerful metaphors. And we should read essays that span all the fields of human endeavour from archeology, zoology, and biology, to all the great philosophers of time.

Bradbury’s rationale?

Every night, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one short story, one poem, and one essay. By the end of a thousand nights, Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff! You’ll be full of ideas and metaphors along with your perceptions of life and your own personal experiences, which you’ve put away, and what you see in your friends and your relatives. And the more metaphors you can cram yourself with, they’ll bounce around inside your head and make new metaphors. That’s why you’re doing this.

I was convinced. Several years ago I took the challenge. I’m proud to say that I completed Ray Bradbury’s reading program. I read one short story, one poem, and one essay every night for a thousand nights and I can say with complete certainty that this program made me more creative than ever before. I felt its powerful effects just a couple weeks after beginning.

When I tell people I followed this program, many are quick to marvel and assert that it must have been difficult reading that much. The actual reading was the easy part. It was enjoyable and usually only took thirty minutes each day. The hard part was tracking down the short stories, poems, and essays I would read. That often took longer than the reading itself!

So I’m going to make things easier for you and source you some poems, short stories, and essays. All you have to do is read. Either pick up some of my recommended volumes below (all available on Amazon) or check out my free recommendations.

You are about to go on a grand adventure. Even if you only complete a week of this challenge (as opposed to 1,000 nights like Bradbury prescribes), you will have more creativity and new ideas than you will know what to do with. If you’re a writer, you will find your creative well overflowing.

If you follow my free recommendations, you will experience a treasure chest of literary gems.

Enjoy your reading exercise. Dig in, savour, enjoy.