In July, 2025, I began participating in the Tom Sachs/NikeCraft ISRU Summer Camp. This series of challenges was designed to help break bad habits (mostly the phone addiction) and forge new rituals. One ritual, Output Before Input, asked us to create first thing. Eyes open; set pen, pencil, crayon, etc. to paper, cardboard, wood, your cat. Didn’t matter. What mattered most was putting something into the world before letting too much of the world into you. I began with a normal ritual: a simple record of the day before: things I remembered, things I didn’t want to forget. But honestly? That was boring. On August 22, I thought, “What if I wrote openings every day? What if every day I started a novel? What if I did it for a year?”
That’s what we have here (so far). Every one is a shitty first draft. Some shittier than others.
The process: I wake and then scribble in a notebook. About once a week—every couple-few days—I type them up here, unchanged. I have no idea if I’ll ever do anything with them. If you’d like to do something with one of them, please feel free.
093/365 11/22/2025
Watch this: Mammy and Pappy lived up in the holler in a rickety house us kids loved in summer.
Watch this: Mamaw and Papaw lived over near Holyrood in a rickety house on the edge of the great Western Interior Seaway. Us kids hated it in summer, with the heat and wind and nothing but horizon and flat, baked earth
Watch this: Grandma and Grandpa lived in a Sears Lewiston home in Amherst, Mass, a creaky little cottage—the house, though Amherst is not without its own creaky, cottagey aspects—with not much room for us kids, regardless of season.
Watch this: Grandmama and Grandpapa lived in quiet luxury outside Danbury. Their Tudor home perched atop a rolling glade and surveyed verdant acres of maple, sassafras and poplar. We couldn’t wait to visit in summer, and often whispered indignant conversations in the dead of night wondering why on earth our parents had chosen to live in Florida.
092/365 11/21/2025
Never share the real, big secrets first. This should go without saying, but you’d be surprised. Some people, the real, big secrets sit inside them threatening to burst them open from the inside out. One time, a guy confessed to me he had a thing for chickens. We were on a bus! Just small chit-chat and then the chicken bomb. Weird thing? He wanted to assure me he never ate the ones he fucked. Nor did he give them to anyone else. The sex chickens received a nice, dignified burial in a wooded glade outside of town. Those are his words. “Wooded glade.”
People share their shit with me all the time. I guess I have that kind of face.
091/365 11/20/2025
Finally Friday. Stephens started his regular routine:
“Hoo boy. Big plans this weekend, Davis?” He waited for the normal response of Lego and nerd games and some time with the cat, but Davis didn’t respond. He continued apace, “Gonna get up all in that nerd gaming, probably. I hear ya. Kill some orcs, grab the treasure, kiss a princess. Me? I got a fine little hottie waiting for me in Burbank. She’s already made the margaritas and has them chilling poolside.” He stood up. “Got my swimsuit and go bag in the car, I’m ready to fly.” He turned his attention across the cubicle wall to peer down at Davis and lord his life over the man as he had done so many Fridays before.
Davis sat slumped in his chair, his chin doubled and eyes staring. He had a pale look about him that was worse than usual.
“Hey, buddy. You feeling ok?”
090/365 11/19/2025
The boy began waking early. Four, sometimes three in the morning. His excitement like a thing alive inside him so lively he didn’t need an alarm. He woke, sat straight up in bed and butt-scooted down to the footboard where his clothes sat folded neatly, their own kind of potential energy radiating from them.
Clothes changed, shoes in hand, he padded downstairs and eased open the sliding glass door. Sat on the concrete to don his shoes and crept across the dewy lawn to the shed and his bike inside it.
He knew all the tricks of silence. WD-40 on the shed door rails every morning kept it gliding smooth and soundless.
089/365 11/18/2025
Back then we were all about various levels of maxing. Got those little rubber chew things as part of our looksmaxing. Scoped the best thrift places and junk shops for fashionmaxing. Our friend Max even decided to be the best version of himself and went around talking about Maxmaxing. Mostly he ate eggs?
It was dumb. We were dumb. But we were having a good time.
088/365 11/17/2025
The title Egyptologist is a bit like a nickname: it must be bestowed upon you. If one calls himself an Egyptologist, it’s widely recognized the man is a cad. Which is precisely why, when Winford Smythe came to the club and referred to himself as not only an Egyptologist, but a pre-eminent Egyptologist, we all knew he was a cad of the highest order.
086/365 11/15/2025
Sometimes, the traffic cleared just enough for him to get some speed. Twist the throttle, listen to the little one-stroke go from it’s walking-speed puk-puk-puk to a sound more akin to a dozen angry frogs all telling their names to an admiring bog. Bibbity-bibbity-bibbity-bip! When the traffic cleared, he could feel the wind. The rush of air and even the clouds of diesel exhaust didn’t matter. In those scant seconds, he was free.
085/365 11/14/2025
“I had a dream you wrote a book titled TIL: California. It was huge, like a dictionary, and I thought, ‘Well hot damn,’ and bought a copy, but I didn’t get a chance to see what was inside.”
He says things like this to me all the time. Just random bits. I count myself lucky his dream summaries are always brief.
084/365 11/13/2025
His favorite time was afterwards, at summer’s end. When the canoes and kayaks had all been cleaned and sorted and stored. The camp cabins swept and dusted. When the cries of joy and tears of torment—all the hormones and all the baggage had gone, and fall’s first yellow leaves appeared in tree tops across the lake. That, he agreed, was a time of great possibilities.