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.
318/365 07/06/2026
The pitch was simple: If you’d been wronged—cheated on, harassed, fired without good cause—you could pay half up front, half on delivery, and a small group of big-hearted hackers would spend one day breaking into all your ex’s social media accounts, and another day completely rearranging their algorithms.
317/365 07/05/2026
Every family in The South has in its history an aged, dilapidated mansion. White. A long drive winding through pine or oak and past a wrought iron gate, up to the deep, shady porch. Once magnificent, the mansion now lists like a sinking steamboat, black shadow rectangles where the windows used to be and a swamp that crept up from the backside and soaked the once solid ground that holds the mansion’s foundation.
315/365 07/03/2026
Some days start better than others. Yesterday, for example: blew my nose in the bathroom, went to toss the crumpled toilet paper into the bin, and missed. When I went to pick it up, my whole sense of distance went right out the window, and I accidentally mushed my whole mouth against the toilet rim. Conked my head on the tank pretty good, too. But that toilet kiss really set the tone for my day.
314/365 07/02/2026
The kingdom of Errant harnessed the wind. Caught her, captured her. Turned her into a beast of burden. The technologies they made were wondrous. Towering buildings of gleaming marble. Water pumped from lakes and seas over miles for baths, drinking, elegant fountains in city squares.
313/365 07/01/2026
She was a little dog what thought she was a big one. Conversely, he was a big dog what thought he was little.
312/365 06/30/2026
The young couple relished in showing others what they couldn’t have. The man tall, broad and tan. The woman lithe and willowy.
310/365 06/28/2026
The Dragon Mother slept atop the earth. Her cave was miles deep. Her fiery furnace heart kept it warm. Outside on the surface, the polar ice and snow swirled and raged with storming winds. Inside, the Dragon Mother breathed deep and shifted; smoke swirls rose from her nostrils.
309/365 06/27/2026
Before he lost his hand in the thresher, Malcom Blatt was known among the women of Ulysses for his delicate, ladylike fingers.