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.
264/365 05/13/2026
Imagine yourself surrounded by blackest night, the air thick and humid, soundless. Not a creature stirs, and the world holds its collective breath as if hiding in a cosmic cupboard and praying, please, please, please….
263/365 05/12/2026
Welcome, friends, to a tale old as time. A tale filled with adventure and perils beyond measure. Magic and monsters and a little bit of mirth. For what is life without peril and laughs?
262/365 05/11/2026
After, things were never the same. For some, the differences were small. Inconveniences. For some, their whole world reset and they had to refigure everything.
261/365 05/10/2026
We had back then what amounted to the equivalent of high school gentlemen’s clubs. The Fellows, The Brew Crew, The Muffler Men. All the middles lived there. The boys not cool enough for the official social and service clubs, too needy to join us outsiders on Goth Hill. They were, as you can imagine, the worst. And to exact my ultimate revenge, I outlived all of them.
260/365 05/09/2026
There were stages of intimacy inherent in the watching of strangers. From the sidewalk, seeing heads silhouetted against the television on the wall achieved a certain level. Seven of 10, maybe, depending on the show. Sports? Kind of bland, though ripe for consideration: which team are they rooting for? With what fervor?
258/365 05/07/2026
My name is Alistair Turnt. Alistair after my great-great-grandfather, though he had the decency to put an e-shaped flourish at the end of his name, and Turnt after my father, Axel “Rod” Turnt, who somehow convinced my mom to move to Jacksonville, FL, get pregnant and raise a family.
257/365 05/06/2026
What do you say in the aftermath? When the dust has settled and the realization blooms inside you and all the horrible, hateful things you said come tumbling into your brain in a kind of high relief?
256/365 05/05/2026
One of the things I love about living in the city: the quiet agreement among us all that public is private as long as you’re doing private things. Like right now, I’m crying on the bus. It’s not important why. Not yet, anyway. But it’s important that I’m crying, and I don’t want to be bothered about it, and everyone agrees that I won’t be bothered. We all know.
I don’t know if it’s body language or what, but there it is: I’m crying on the bus and there’s something about the way I’m sitting, the way I’m holding myself, and everyone looks the other way. I think if it was different, if I wanted or needed the comfort of strangers, someone would come to my rescue. Or at least offer me a Kleenex. They’d hold out a travel pack and say, “Here,” or, “Clean yourself up.” Something. They’d hold out the tissues and say something, and I’d take the offering and blow my nose and wipe my eyes and maybe hand the package back or slide it into my jacket pocket, depending. We’d all know. And no one would have to explain it or get into the weeds of personal interaction. I like that about this place.
I like other things, too….