Dear January, you're alright you know

It’s not easy being the one to gently take us by the hand and lead us from one year into the next. I figure it's time we gave you, and us, a break.

The quarry on Ilkley Moor, next to Cow & Calf rocks, Thursday 30th January 2025

“Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you
The horizon leans forward
Offering you space to place new steps of change.”
from 'On the Pulse of Morning' by Maya Angelou

It’s not easy being January, responsible for bridging the gap between December with its tinsel and glitter, presents, Christmas music, and the New Year. Then there’s February snapping at its heels, sprinting up with its, ‘At least it’s not January anymore,’ Valentines (& Galentines) Day, sometimes Shrove Tuesday pancakes and leap year fun, although sorry February, not this year.

The merest hint of dank sky and it’s all, ‘Well what do you expect, it”s January,’ but as soon as there’s blue sky and the tip of a snowdrops peeking through the soggy earth it’s all ‘Oh look, thank goodness, signs of Spring are here’. Zero credit for January doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

It’s felt like it’s taken me a while to find my feet this year. Rhythm and routine eluding me, especially on the writing front. Exercise too has been stop start, too few head clearing walks on the moor. Maybe it’s just taking the time it needs to take.

Behind the WNO orchestra, a misty Somerset morning & Renoir's The Young Girl in Blue, my favourite from the National Museum of Wales

A brief road trip & escaping the Ilkley bubble

I escaped Ilkley for a few days to drive the middle child back to university whilst also giving me the chance to catch up with both sisters and an old friend. Hours spent behind the wheel driving from Ilkley to Cardiff to Penarth to Bath to Frome and back to Ilkley again.

Relatively free flowing traffic and a conversation-rich first leg with the curly haired one, while Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, Ventura Highway radio on Spotify and even silence kept me company the rest of the time.

In Cardiff I bagsied a seat in the circle behind the orchestra at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama to watch my viola playing sister and the rest of the Welsh National Opera’s orchestra perform their final Viennese concert of the season. An evening filled with joyful polkas and waltzes and a new perspective sitting behind the orchestra facing the rest of the audience.

I loved watching the backs of the musicians, the swaying violinists and a smiling double bassist while I squinted, trying to read the music on the bassoonists music stands just below me.

An over too quickly, how much can we fit into an hour’s chat in Bath with Victoria before a brief foray into Somerset to visit sister no. 2. Cue more sisterly conversation and switching from the inauguration to finishing off Last Tango in Halifax. Surely the perfect January companion TV programme, only rivalled by Sunday evening’s The Great Pottery Throw Down.

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On the writing front: perception vs reality

It might not have felt like a stellar writing month either but when I look more closely I see there’s a perception v reality gap. Because wasn’t there that call with Barrie from

Encourage Meant

and

Feasts and Fables

. A free ranging chat about writing and life that I haven’t fully revisited yet. I have been ruminating on the part where we talked about my writing not having a set destination though. How adopting a mindset where I use the writing to reveal the journey might just be the way forward, and maybe that’s what lies behind Gently Does It.

Then there’s the

Breakthroughs & Blocks

Writing RESET course with

Chris Smith

and

Bec Evans

and a whole host of writers that’s helping me to work out how to keep going on this meandering writing journey. Helping me to identify and overcome the writing obstacles I have a habit of bumping up against.

It turns out that identifying the obstacles is the easy part, in my case it’s me. I’m the one getting in the way of writing what I want and need to write. Working out how to stop getting in my own way is the tough bit. Leaning into this writing community and having the space to reflect and work through these barriers is so, so helpful.

A realisation while standing behind the microphone

And our Moor Words Spoken Word evening last Thursday where a dozen local writers stepped up to the mic to share their writing, including yours truly.

A warm, welcoming audience, and not my first open mic, but my most nervy. A changed venue, and a reading ‘Bless the baked beans’ (link below) that I didn’t have full confidence in. I got to the point where I figured it was good enough to share on a Thursday evening in an Ilkley pub though and I know I need to learn that good enough is more often than not, good enough.

Stepping up to the mic did confirm one thing (and it’s why I didn’t feel 100% confident in the piece I read out), I want to shift away from writing memoir to fiction, short stories I think. At least that’s where my head is right now.

The timing wasn’t ideal, standing in front of a sea of faces waiting expectantly for me to read to them to realise I didn’t want to write or share memoir for a while. Maybe that’s what it needed though for me to listen to the voice that’s been whispering in my ear for more than a year now.

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Bless the baked beans

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Maybe I have done more than I realised this month.

Isn’t that often the way?

Maybe I should give January credit for being the month where I’ve given myself full permission to swing between big-ish ideas and nesting on the sofa with the curtains pulled.

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Remembering to acknowledge the good stuff

There’s a prompt from an end of the year writing wrap-up workshop back in December that’s stuck with me, more than the prompts asking me to contemplate the year ahead. It’s the one where we were asked to write down our writing wins from 2024?

Oh. You want me to look back and pull out the good stuff.

Interesting.

I paused. I thought about these posts and the readers who found something they liked in my words and hit subscribe (thank you!). I thought about the friends I’ve made through writing, and the conversations we’ve had about writing and life. I thought about the times I’ve opened my notebook and just written.

2024 was also the year my words first appeared in the

London Writers' Salon

anthology. That’s pretty decent, isn’t it?

These are the things I have a habit of skating over, forgetting instantly while devoting energy and (over)thinking time to, ‘Yes, but what next’ and over analysing the days where I struggled to write at all.

January's reading pile, not a lot of time spent at the writing desk and a handful of HiT classes so far this year

January has a job to do

I write all of this as a reminder for me. A reminder that January has a job to do. It brings a lot of good stuff but maybe, like the claggy earth in the garden, it’s harder to break through, the good stuff just harder to spot or feel.

I’ve had - if I think about it - fabulously life affirming, soul enriching, heart warming conversations this month, many on the shop floor at work too. Going to

Jennie Godfrey

visit to The Grove Bookshop on Tuesday evening to talk about her Sunday Times Best Seller debut novel The List of Suspicious Things is a classic example. Joy, warmth and a few tears too in a bookshop on a damp Tuesday evening.

There’ve also been plenty of afternoons marooned on the sofa, surrounded by Lemsips, tissues and Strepsils trying to read while the words on the page swam around.

I saw the memes earlier this week with the whole, ‘Don’t worry you won’t have to face another January Monday for another 12 months’ which made me a bit sad if I’m honest.

There must be another way to enter a new year, of living through January without it turning into a battle of wills or wishing it away.

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At least that’s where I’ve got to. How about you though, how’s your January been and how are you feeling as we walk into February?

I loved the contributions and comments from my last post on how we want 2025 to feel. I might not know where this writing journey is heading, but I do know that it’s a lot more interesting with you all on board. If you missed it, the link is below, feel free to join the conversation, I’d love to hear from you.

How do you want to feel in 2025?

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Thank you as ever for reading, every like, comment and share is a huge confidence boost and a very gratefully received nudge to just keep on writing.

Thank you,
Harriet

PS I keep fiddling around with this but need to hit send, so apologies as always for any typos and errors!