A Literary Prescription for
For the exciting and terrifying moment when the old story ends and the blank page opens in front of you.
New beginnings are never as clean as their name suggests. They tend to arrive alongside grief for what they are replacing, anxiety about what they might become, and the specific vertigo of having no script. The books, poems, and words gathered here are for that complicated feeling — the one that contains both hope and fear at once, and does not know yet which one will win.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”Anaïs Nin
Books
Books that understand the complexity of starting again.
Vanderbilt spent a year learning things as an adult beginner — surfing, chess, singing, drawing — and wrote a book about what beginning actually feels like when you are no longer young, and what it teaches you. For anyone whose new beginning requires learning something unfamiliar, Vanderbilt’s account of the discomfort and joy of genuine beginner’s mind is both funny and fortifying.
Cameron’s twelve-week course in creative recovery is one of the most reliable maps available for beginning again after a long period of not-beginning — whether the creative block is literal or metaphorical. Her morning pages practice and artist’s dates have helped millions of people restart what had gone quiet, and the book remains as useful now as when it was first published.
Gilbert’s book on creative living treats the fear that accompanies any new beginning as an expected travelling companion rather than a stop sign, something to be invited along for the ride rather than waited out. It is an unusually permission-giving book for anyone hesitating at the start of something.
Duhigg breaks down exactly how habits form and, more usefully, how they can be deliberately rebuilt, which makes this a practical companion for anyone trying to make a new beginning actually stick rather than fizzle out by February. It treats willpower as far less important than most self-help books suggest.
Poetry
Poems for the blank page and what to do with it.
“Begin”
Brendan Kennelly, 1994
Kennelly’s poem does not promise that beginning will be easy or that this time will be the last time. It simply insists on the act — the summoning birds are there, the light is at the window, and that is enough to begin with.
“Go to the Limits of Your Longing” (extract)
Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy
Rilke’s instruction to let everything happen — to stay open to both beauty and terror rather than managing your exposure to one or the other — is one of the most bracing pieces of advice available for anyone standing at the edge of something new and trying to control how it goes.
“You Don’t Know How Strong You Are”
Georgia Clare, Ashes & Wildflowers
For the moment before a new beginning when you are not yet sure you are strong enough — this poem suggests that you will find out you are, exactly when you need to know.
Quotes & Prose
For the first day, and the second, and the days when beginning again feels too hard.
Every moment is a fresh beginning.
T.S. Eliot
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
C.S. Lewis