As 2025 comes to a close, and 2026 stands ready to shine down upon us, I find myself thinking of the year to come. I have thoughts of the year that was to be certain, but for the past few days, the future has been dancing about my head in a game of cerebral hide and seek. In a montage of what was, what could have been and what may yet be, a resolution of New Year worthiness crystalized in my mind.
Admittedly, some who read this may suspect a clever procrastination in the creation of our game studio, Doers of Stuff, but I am holding out the belief otherwise. Not because I am being cavalier about the time requirement to engage in this resolution, but because I am serious about creating an ongoing business, not just a single game. Video games are a strange breed of software that draws less on the rules and practices of software and more on the creativity and artistry of entertainment. While I have plenty of confidence in the former, I am much less confident in the later.
I have spent 35 years in Software and IT and fear no task in that realm. During the bulk of that career however, I considered Entertainment to be little more than mindless fluff. So, while I enjoyed and benefited from the output of the Entertainment industry, I have no understanding or appreciation for the production of it. Yet, I know enough to understand the fickle nature of popular appeal means technical excellence alone does not translate into success. That nebulous realm of creative appeal that allows our game to create an impactful connection between us and the players is much more akin to what makes a book, a movie or an album successful and much, much less to do with completing all the tasks in our ToDo list.
So, how does one foster creativity? How does one sculpt it into a product? Some people, of course, are just wired that way. They are creative because they have no ability to be otherwise. But the rest of us have spent a lifetime suppressing that creative core we are all born with; the one that carries us through our childhood. This means, we need to do something to regain those lost powers; to relight those flames of creativity within us. And that is what I resolved to do.
Enter the “3/1/52 Challenge,” a variation on what is sometimes called the “Ray Bradbury Challenge.”
In a keynote speech at the Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University in 2001, author Ray Bradbury challenged his audience to read 1 poem, 1 essay and 1 short story every night for a thousand nights. He encouraged reading for all disciplines and genres, particularly turn of the 20th century (and older) writings. He said by doing so your head would be so full of ideas, or as he says, metaphors, that it will cause you to start creating your own metaphors and from those, your own story ideas.
Of course, the whole point is to take those ideas and turn them into stories. Bradbury also challenged his audience to write a short story a week. His belief was that short stories allowed for new authors to practice and hone their skills faster and more completely by simply writing more stories. He further declared it impossible to write fifty-two stories and have them all be bad!
The 3/1/52 Challenge then is a combination of those two challenges created by Michael La Ronn in the January 2026 issue of Writers Digest. In this version of the challenge, you read three pieces as described by Bradbury, once every day and then once a week, you write a short story. Rinse and repeat for an entire year.
So, there it is…
Fortunately, I have no shortage of source material. For some time, I have been a member of the Library of America book club. Every six weeks I get a new slipcased version of a collection of writings by American authors. I do have a few other books of other authors from around the world, but the LoA collection ensures I will not run short of material.
Ray Bradbury made clear the importance of reading from many subjects and disciplines, but I think there is also value in immersion. So rather than skipping around completely willy-nilly (at least for now), I will focus on just three authors. The three I have chosen are:
With these three companions I will start my journey. While I know where I want to be at the end of next year, I can’t imagine where I really will be. So, with my first step, my journey of a thousand miles and my million worst words, begins.
There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
The Spirit of Poetry, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
That dwells where’re the gentle south-wind blows;