The Unmarked Days

Thoughts on Moving into a Creative New Year

January has landed alternately hot and cold, a temperamental spirit, in our house. This is mainly on account of a boiler that had to be nursed through the festive season and continues to be unpredictable. Fortunately, we have good kind people who come out to help us and heaters to keep at least one or two rooms warm. It is a salutary reminder of how fortunate we are to live in comfort and warmth.

After Christmas, we managed to escape boiler watch for several days, by visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Oxford. Here we wandered the city streets lined with colleges, venturing into University Park, where the winter flowering cherry was in full bloom and the mahonia lured us into its dense, perfume cloud. Later, we lingered in Blackwell's, my idea of bookshop heaven. We were generally spoiled with warmth and good food.

Spending time with my sister-in-law has been inspiring. Though we both share a love of colour and cloth, of collage and print, we are involved in very different creative endeavours. I am a writer. She is a designer and textile artist, but as women exploring our creativity, we have much in common. We have moments of believing in ourselves and our work, but are more often hesitant and unsure. At times we give way to doubting our ability to make anything.

Together, we slay those demons! I think this comes from the way we instinctively admire and believe in each other’s work. We both like the idea of working in collaboration and have decided to collaborate more, albeit at a distance and not on a single project, but by sharing our ideas, our goals, our inspirations. This is not about critiquing each other’s work but more about discussing thoughts and processes, reporting back-which is always motivational-and generally cheering each other on. Finding a creative buddy, like this, for 2024, has been a great gift.

New Year is often the time when we think about what shape our creative work will take in the year ahead. With the falling away of all our festive commitments, the days between Christmas and New Year, offer a hiatus, a time to breathe out and wonder about the coming year. It invariably provides fruitful thinking time for me. This year is no exception and I find I am particularly keen to get away from the anxieties that come with publication, and instead to relish the opportunity to be more playful and to worry less about outcomes.

Here is a letter I wrote to myself, which appeared on my website blog, January 3rd 2015. I find so much of it rings true for me still as we move into 2024. And yes, among other things, including my return to a partially begun novel, poetry calls again. Or perhaps it never really goes away...

Dear Avril

The New Year came gently at first, in clouds and a wind from the west. By evening the wind was fierce, demanding to be heard. As you take possession of the house, breathing out in all directions, you feel yourself shift like the wind. Contentment and peace and anticipation of the year ahead turn to restlessness, worry, unwarranted anxiety.

In the coming year you will spend many days like this: a funambulist, feet curled on the wire, troubled by the wind. The trick is to find the space between the highwire and the fall: the days of leather-soled slippers and lace umbrellas where you tread lightly, in balance, the days where the wire is broad and the wind gentle. You will find this space in the act of writing and creating something new.

You have days to look to, to mark on the calendar: the publication of your short story collection, a launch, workshops, a festival, a literary gig, a week of poetry – dates marked with stars, red letter days. Enjoy them, know that you find it all too easy to underplay them, you’ve been schooled for that from long ago. Try not to do that this year. Try to make them truly red letter. Do not apologise.

But remember the unmarked days: mornings of writing, afternoons of reading and being mindful, watching the trees blacken in the late sun, days you long for when you don’t have them, radio days, peaceful, alone days. And the days of sun and gardens and friendship too. These are the precious days, the days that live up to unheld expectation. The quiet days.

Take care of your body, keep your back loose, exercise, stretch, do yoga, otherwise it’s going to get very hard to work at the computer and do the thing you want to do more than any other.

Poetry is calling, find the inspiration. Read. Read. Read. Be proud of what you do, quietly proud.

Do not concern yourself with acclaim… ‘try to acclaim… a little bit every day, but not too much. Just some…’ Sharon Olds

Write as if you are not afraid.

Love
Avril

January 3 2015

Finally I’d like to offer you two quotes that I'm taking into 2024 with me, both from Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic,

 Not everything you do has to become public

Look to be part of a culture that is collaborative rather than high performing

Thanks for reading - Avril x