January Isn't a Beginning. It's a Return

Can You Stay?

Every January, writers feel it.

The quiet draw back to the book and that sense that maybe this year is the year I’ll do my best work.

January doesn’t arrive shouting and it shouldn’t. It’s not about resolutions or false promises or even organizing and planning. It’s about one question.

Can you stay?

Not stay motivated and not stay until everything is perfect. Just can you stay in a relationship with your creative work long enough for it to take shape.

I think we misunderstand what it takes to write and finish a book.

We imagine a surge of confidence, a clear run of time, a version of ourselves who doesn’t falter or hesitate. But that writer rarely shows up. The real writer is the one who returns tired, unsure, doubtful and sits down to write anyway.

This is why I talk so much about support. Because writing a book is not a single act of will. It’s a long conversation between you and the work. And conversations need space, rhythm, and someone who knows when to listen and when to respond.

Most unfinished books don’t fail because the writer lack talent. They remain unfinished because the writer was trying to hold everything alone and it’s a lot: the structure, the doubt, the momentum, the life around it.

Support changes the shape of what’s possible.

It turns the book from something you carry in your head into something that lives in your hands, on the page, in the world.

I’m often asked what it really takes to finish a book.

The answer is quieter than people expect.

It takes returning.
It takes knowing what this stage of the book is asking of you.
It takes accepting that the middle will ask more than the beginning ever did.
It takes letting the book change you — just enough — as you write it.

And it takes believing that the work you’re doing now, imperfect and unfinished, is not wasted.

January isn’t about becoming a different writer.

It’s about choosing how you’ll stay with the one you already are.

So if you’re hesitating with your book this month — not quite starting, not quite finished — I want you to invite you to sit.

Here’s a few questions to sit with:

· What stage is my book really in right now — not where I wish it were?

· What does this stage ask for more of: structure, time, courage, patience, support?

· Where am I trying to do this alone, when I don’t need to?

· If I trusted that my book could be finished, what would I do differently this month?

· What would it mean to take my writing seriously — without punishing myself?

January will pass, as it always does.

But the way you meet your book now — with steadiness, honesty, and care — will echo much further than this month.

I believe that.

And if you’re still lugging this book around in your head, there’s a good reason for that.