Completing the 1000 Nights Challenge

As I write this, I’ve just finished my 1000 Nights Challenge (inspired by Ray Bradbury): to read a poem, a short story and an essay a night…for 1000 nights.

I’m going to capture what made it doable for me, in case it’s helpful. But if you commit to doing it, I’m sure you’ll find your own unique way through.

1. Don’t focus on 1000, just make a start. In my first week of doing it, someone asked me, ‘How are you going to find 1000 essays?!’ My answer—I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out. (i.e. A bit at a time!)
2. It doesn’t really matter where you start. There’ll be PLENTY of time to calibrate as you go. I bought some second-hand anthologies and dived in.
3. It’s up to you how you record it. I had a super messy rolling Word doc with notes and links and recommendations, and what I was reading that week. Then I just stuck the actual night’s reading into a Google calendar, synced to the one that you can see on my website here. (It could have been on a spreadsheet or in a notebook etc. Whatever works for you is good.)
4. Remember the spirit of Ray. All of Ray Bradbury’s advice is given with great joy, zest and gusto. So, let that be your guide. I don’t think Ray was a stickler for the rules.
5. An example of ‘spirit of Ray’, for me, was week-ifying the challenge. What I mean by that is that sometimes I could read all 3 in a day. (A poem, a short story and an essay.) But sometimes I needed to jiggle the spread a bit. I might know that I had a big day of other commitments coming up, and choose to read a few extra in advance, or plan for a catch-up.
6. Audio can be your friend. I do think that I process audio a bit differently to reading on the page, but it all counts. I mainly added it into the mix for short stories. I particularly loved listening to the New Yorker podcast, which I’ll link to below: A writer reads another writer’s short story and then discusses it with Deborah Treisman. It introduced me to new writers, and with some of them I wanted to explore more of their work—I made a note of these and bought their collections.
7. You can do this on any budget. There are lots of free resources to help you explore, and I’ve listed one for each category below. But if you’re considering a challenge like this, you’re likely a book person who loves writers, and you’ll have your own combination of ways of supporting them—libraries, buying their books, recommending and gifting their work etc.
8. Be both open and honest with yourself about your own tastes. There are no shoulds here. It’s both a great chance to try new things and be unapologetic about your responses. Just because it’s deemed a ‘great work’ by someone else doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you if it doesn’t resonate.
9. Maybe earmark a little pile of ‘short’ ones for really busy days/weeks. 😊 ‘Short’ stories vary. Essays vary. Some short stories are not very short!
10. Remember that these are ‘pomegranate seeds’ not a to-do list. (See the lovely Ray for what he means by ‘pomegranate seeds’.) And even if you don’t want to do this particular challenge, what would be the equivalent for you? What do you want to be putting into your brain and why?

 I also recorded a podcast part way through, sharing findings from this and from writing 52 short stories in a year. You can listen here.

3 Resources to help you explore each category:

Poems: A poem a day

Short stories: The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

Essays: The Electric Typewriter

3 Favourites:

What we love is so personal. But I’ve been asked about favourites a lot. So, I’m going to include these 3 because I loved them so much that reading them once wasn’t enough! (For example, I read The Anthropocene Reviewed early on, and then went back to it in my final 30 days—I still love it just as much!)

Poems: Machete, Tomas Q Morin

Short stories: Sum, David Eagleman.

Plus special mention for George Saunders’ short story, Offloading for Mrs Schwartz. The audio (read by George) is wonderful. It’s funny and punched me in the chest. So much so that I had to buy and read the whole collection, CivilWarland in Bad Decline. Extraordinary.

Essays: The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green

Final note:

This post is focused mainly on the practicalities of doing this—that’s what I get messages and questions about, and I’m happy to help.

But zooming out, the much bigger wonder for me centres on what doing a Quest like this will give you. How the reading will change you. The ‘pomegranate seeds’ it will plant in your brain (watch the Ray video to learn more about this).

What an amazing adventure it’s been—the writers I’ve discovered, the things I’ve learned about. The things that have sparked my curiosity, and what’s crystallised in my own writing loves and tastes.

It’s been a priceless experience. So, thank you to Ray Bradbury for inspiring this wordy adventure.

I wish you much joy, zest and gusto.

If you have questions you can find me here.

And if you’re curious about trying something like this yourself, and want help, I work with a limited number of people here.