A friend recently shared this video on Bluesky, An Evening with Ray Bradbury, during which Bradbury recommends that new writers read a poem, a short story and an essay every night for 1000 nights. The goal is to fill your mind with lots of different voices, topics, styles of writing, metaphors and ways of looking at the world in aid of making you a better writer. Now, I am not a new writer, and I also know that if I tried to read a short story, a poem and an essay every day, I'd probably have to stop reading novels for a while to do it, and since I'm a novellist, that doesn't seem like the wisest choice. 

I can see a lot of value in the practice though, and I am forever looking for ways to improve myself as a person and as a writer. So I decided to attempt a slower version of the challenge, committing to reading 1 poem, 1 essay and 1 short story each week. And to keep myself accountable, I decided to blog about it. (See this post for why it's called the blackthorn challenge).

I'm choosing to interpret the word 'essay' widely and will be including things like blog posts, letters on a topic, forewordsd to books etc. because part of the reason for doing this is to explore writing widely. So. Let's get into week 1's reading.

Poem: Strawberries by Edwin Morgan

I'm cheating a little with this one, as I've read it before. I do like Morgan's work and the imagery in this piece in particular. That last line. I can't say I understand why it works so well for me, but maybe learning how to understand is the point of this project. 

Essay: Exploring Empire in Fantasy: A Critical Review by Stewart Hotston. 

I haven't read The Tainted Cup, the book which prompted Hotston's post here, but I have noticed myself the use of the word empire to refer to what is simply a country, or emporer given as a title to a monarch, in various fantasy novels and it's something I've picked people up for in my editing work. Empire is the word for a specific approach to civilisation and it's a term that is often misused in fanatsy, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is. 

Incidentally, if you're not already following Stewart Hotston, I highly recommned that you do. Both his fiction and his blog writing are well worth your time. 

Short Story: Well Tester by E.M. Faulds

There's a reason that E.M. Faulds has won awards for short fiction and you can see it in this piece. Economically written, powerful, and with as much to say about life here and now as it is about any future well tester. Highly recommended. 

Now, the other half of the challenge is to write a short story a week. Since I already have publishing commitments for novels, I have to dedicate the majority of my writing time to making progress with those, but I thought I would aim to write a short story a month, starting in November (which ties in nicely with an anthology I've been invited to contribute to), so I'll post updates about that side of the challenge too. 

Wish me luck!