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.
328/365 07/16/2026
The assassin fired three shots from high atop One Blackfriars, all intended for the Prime Minister, who was giving a dedication speech in the Tate Modern’s Garden.
327/365 07/15/2026
When he woke the next morning, he barely recognized himself in the mirror. Red eyes swollen nearly shut. Flushed skin pressed tight from the inside like the booze had slightly inflated him.
325/365 07/13/2026
What he knew: he’d developed a consistent, nagging cough. What he didn’t know: the cough represented a second self, begging to be free.
324/365 07/12/2026
324/365 07/12/2026
I liked getting under my neighbor’s skin. Sometimes it’d be major, like building a second fence two feet onto my side of the property line and painting it with rainbows. Other times it’d be simple, like calling the lawn guy we shared Jesus.
“He prefers hey-SOOSE,” my neighbor would say.
“I don’t speak Mexican,” I’d say. “So it’s GEE-zus.” And then I’d get to watch his cheeks get red.
322/365 07/10/2026
The monster said, “Me…Monster. You…Jane.”
I rolled my eyes and thought, Not this again…
321/365 07/09/2026
I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled
The line swirled in his mind each day as he got dressed, did indeed roll the bottom of his trousers. Some pairs one turn, some pairs two. And though he did grow old, he was not yet old. Least on the inside, and still in fair shape on the outside. And this without growth hormones or T or any such extraneous measures.
320/365 07/08/2026
Mary Winthrop enjoyed the quiet things. Afternoon tea in the garden. A Sunday’s read in the stuffed chair they seemed to keep just for her at the little bakery down the street.