An artist pal was visiting Dundee from Glasgow this weekend, and he suggested we see a screening of the animé Princess Mononoke. This was newly restored in 4K quality and was showing for a limited time only.
Before and after the screening, we talked about our unrealised projects, and his long-term plan to move to London and make a start on some of these. While I have nothing so dramatic to declare, I do have projects that either need to be started or are now safe to reveal.
It’s a little cliché to do this at New Year, but I promise it’s entirely a coincidence. Here’s a selection of them, not all of which are related to writing.
Unstarted projects
I keep a draft on WordPress with any ideas I think might make for suitable full-length entries. At the time of writing, these comprise:
- The NoSleep community on Reddit. Members post their own horror stories that might plausibly be true, and other members are invited to share in the world as if it were real.
- The events of September 11th. With the 25th anniversary happening later this year, this might be the ideal opportunity to explore the aftermath from a literary perspective.
- Watching animé. I’ve not a frequent film watcher, and the only animé I’ve seen is from Studio Ghibli, so perhaps there’s some room to comment from an outsider’s perspective.
There are also some live events I’d like to start up:
- Stage confidence classes. Regular readers will know I’ve been bandying this idea about for years. So far, no matter how I’ve approached it, the pieces haven’t yet fallen into place.
- A dating event. It can be difficult to write a short bio for a dating app and to suss out the other person. So this meet-up event would attempt to solve the problem by inviting a friend to do the talking instead.
- A spontaneous poetry stall. I would set up my computer and a printer with two-inch wide paper label tape, and improvise poetry for visitors. The templates have been designed and the cost of labels counted out.
Secret plans revealed this year
Roll on January
Every year, I take part in a local project called Fun a Day. This encourages participants to create something during the month, however they wish to define that.
I’d already planned out Roll on January, where I would roll two d6 dice every day for a month and track how many rolls it took to display a double six. I then learnt on New Year’s Eve that there wouldn’t be a Fun a Day in 2026, but I’ve gone ahead with the project anyway.
Double Zero Challenge
The above Roll on January wasn’t the first time I’d experimented with dice-rolling. In fact, I’d been refining the format for more than 12 months.
I tried out a one-off stream on Twitch with two d20 dice, seeing how long it would take to roll a double 20. I then moved to pre-recorded videos on YouTube, with some success, but the videos frequently lasted more than an hour.
As a compromise, I then swapped these for two d10 dice. These still take an unpredictable length of time, but nearly 50 videos in, I think the format has been perfected.
Gavin Cameron 