Next Year's Words

"Looking at God's creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures." - Julia Cameron 'The Artist's Way'

New Year's Day presents itself as an open-faced virgin page. It waits for lives to live themselves in its playground of possibilities. For me and writers everywhere, the blank page is both a place of breathtaking expectation and a wilderness of dithering dilemmas, even fear and block.

New Years' Resolutions are often broken before I have time to put pen to paper or, these days, fingertip to key. A writer's not a writer unless they are writing. So I go on writing and never look back, unless to face down shadows that need to pour themselves into prose or poetry, or to gather half-forgotten scents and scenes and pin them to the page. This year, as every year, this is my resolution.

T.S.Eliot wrote the following lines in "Little Gidding" from his "Four Quartets":

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice."

Better not keep them waiting, then! What on earth or in heaven would we be waiting for?