I Chapter Title My Day, Every Day — and Here’s Why

As a writer, it’s good to write.

WOW, BREAKING NEWS! PLOT TWIST! UNEXPECTED REVELATION ALERT! SOMEBODY INFORM THE ELDERS!

What I mean is, it’s good to write beyond your current literary project. Don’t just write for your writing, write for your life.

I do. I try to, at least. Which is why I made the smallest daily habit of chapter titling my day, every day. It just means giving that day a name, an identity, based on the main events of the hours between sunrise and sunset — or even one specific detail, one moment, one conversation.

Here’s what a few of them look like:

• The Day I Cooked for 2 Little Warriors in My Living Room
• The Day We all Watched a Bloke Get Airlifted off a Mountain
• The Day Big Tina Escaped
• The Day That’s 365 Days Since I Spotted My Soulmate
• The Day I Got Stabbed Again (for £80)
• The Day a Man Almost Jumped off a Building Opposite the Flat

Now, on the surface of things, this just looks the etchings in a wall in a maniac’s cell

But these are actually all real and regular days.

The first one was the day I made pasta for Ben and his buddy, playing Warhammer in the living room. The second was something we saw in France. The third, my mom’s nickname after we all escaped an Escape Room. The fourth, the day I found my Ben. The fifth, a new tattoo. And the sixth, a sad-turned-happy near suicide attempt of a man down the road (he decided not to jump. He decided to live).

So. Now you know a little of the context behind these chapter titles — what the hell are you meant to do with them?

You’re not writing a biography on me, nor are you an obsessive stalker of mine (I hope), so why should that matter to you?

Well. It shouldn’t. It wouldn’t. It only matters to me — and that’s the entire point.

I write those titles because I’m a writer

Because, 1: it’s a fun little writerly way to immortalise my day. And 2: it’s a useful little writerly way of generating ideas.

They always says it, don’t they? “Write what you know.” But I’m em-bellishing that into:

Write what you’ve lived.

And every day, you’ve lived another day. So give it a headline. Then write about it.

As writing exercises, as morning pages, as stream of consciousness, as short stories, as flash fiction, as your next best-selling novel. Whatever you might use them for, you’ll find them useful. Because it’s a story you have already lived through, as the main character, the narrator, the author.

Now all you have to do is splurge the memory onto the page.

And if the day was a little dull, do what writers do

Make some crap up.

Maybe I don’t mention that I was getting a tattoo and instead turn the tale into one where I willingly paid £80 for somebody to stab me in the arm as a long-winded attempt to determine if I truly am human — or a robot.

Maybe I can leave out the fact that a man was airlifted from an alpine mountain (he’s okay, it’s okay) and instead reverse it. He was being dropped off there, having travelled from a distant star in a darker galaxy. Ready to steal the moon.

Maybe Big Tina didn’t escape. Maybe she’s still trapped in that room, clawing at the wallpaper and feeding on any family of 4 that dare try to enter.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

It’s up to me — and your days are up to you.

So start chapter titling your day. Go see what you can do.