Nanowrimo and Ray Bradbury projects

Dany Szelsky
3 min readOct 31, 2020

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Happy Halloween everyone! October has come to its end and the end of a very unpredictable year is upon us. And what have I, your masochistic blogger decided to do? Add one (ok two) more projects to my overflowing to-do list. I can’t help it, whenever I encounter something worth pursuing, I forget about the banalities of time constraints and relaxation to embark on new adventures. Hopefully, these ones will be smoothly mixed with the work I already have to do for university and each will enrich the other.

NANOWRIMO OR, AS I NAMED IT, THE BLOGGING WRIMO

Lately, I have felt comfort in writing. Moreover, I have felt comfort in certain types of writing, namely, Ryan Holiday’s newsletter and R.C. Waldun’s. I have also been contemplating the idea of bringing my love for books, which I shared on my booktube channel, and transforming into something that went beyond. I want to start a movement and share “life lessons” that I’ve learned from the things I read, watch, encounter. Going beyond the book review, I want to bring Romanticism into the daily lives of people and of myself. Thus, I signed up for this year's Nanowrimo to kickstart my writing here in Medium. My goal is to write 50,000 words but instead of following the format of a novel, I will be writing blog posts :)

RAY BRADBURY’S READING DIET

I have one class at university that is challenging, exciting, and inspiring. It’s a class where I feel that I don’t know anything not because I lack sufficient literary skills but because there is yet so much to know and, truth to be told, I have not engaged in active pursuit of knowledge in the past couple of years. Or not as I feel like I should have. Which brings me to a feeling of inadequacy even though it’s not true. But one can use this as an opportunity to expand one's horizons. I read about Ray Bradbury’s reading diet, which recommends the daily read of one essay, one poem, one short story. I’m not so keen on short stories but I am aware of the power of reading such a varied selection every day. I have done a slight variation of this at university when it coincides that I must write an essay while studying poetry or novels for other classes and I can attest to the intellectual benefit of it. But I have not done this actively if I don’t need to. So I will take on this challenge for however long I can sustain it (Bradbury says 1000 nights) and I will read, one essay, one poem, and one short story (or chapter of a novel) every day.

Looking into this project it sounds like more than I can chew but here is the logic behind it:

  • The reading diet will include some things that I need to read for uni anyway.
  • Reading like this will most definitely inspire my writing.
  • Writing daily will also ignite more ideas and facilitate essay writing.

The posts might be spread around my main profile and two publications, depending on what I come up with :)

Here’s to hoping I won’t give up in two days.

What are your plans for November?

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Dany Szelsky
Dany Szelsky

Written by Dany Szelsky

Self acclaimed romantic youth and elysianer. ”The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim” — Oscar Wilde 🥀

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