You did New Year’s wrong!

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“You can only fail us if you do nothing.” ― Neus Figueras, Lorac

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you have already messed up your new-year goals and resolutions.

But worry not, we all have!

And we have the Holy Roman Empire to blame thank for that.

The thing is, you celebrated and planned for January 1st to start your writing and creative year, but that might not work for you. In fact, it probably won’t, for good reason.

Which I’ll get to after this quick history geekery…

As humans, we didn't used to set our annual reset in December/January.

Think about it; depending on which side of the equator you fall, it is either:

The frozen dead of winter and all you want to do is hide away and hibernate through the dark days

OR
The sweltering heights of summer and all you want to do is hide away and lie on a cold cave floor through the endless blaze.

In fact, different civilizations have used many different starting times for their year (their “New Year’s” celebrations).

The oldest record is in Mesopotamia, about 2000 BCE. Akitu started on the first new moon after the spring equinox (so end of March/beginning of April).
Ancient Greeks celebrated it during the winter solstice, around December 21st, with the Festival of Poseidon (followed quickly by festivals of Demeter and Dionysus, which led to some BIG-TIME PARTY CULTURE).
Asian cultures celebrate a Lunar New Year on the second new moon after the winter solstice (so end of January/beginning of February).
Egypt followed Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky (sound familiar?), which appears in early July.
In ancient Rome, the earliest calendars were introduced by King Romulus, which started in Martius (March) and consisted of only 10 months. That nebulous winter time between the end of the calendar and the start of a new year was just a dark and cold void that was "unassigned."

We have Julius Caesar to “thank” for officially declaring that calendars should start on January 1st, which had been a government observation since about 700 BCE, when Numa Pontilius aligned the civil calendar with the election of new Roman consuls for their one-year term in office.

There were also some shifts in days of the month with the Julian calendar, to follow a more solar rise/set pattern, rather than the lunar phases.

As Catholicism swaddled the Roman Empire, many Christians were put off by the pagan and "unchristianlike" celebrations that seemed to accompany this January 1st date.

So in 567, the Council of Tours flat-out abolished January 1st as a start date, and different parts of medieval Christian Europe celebrated the new year on different dates: December 25th (Christmas), March 1st, March 25th, the Feast of Annunciation, and even Easter.

All these different calendar systems, and a reversion to the lunar calendar system, worked well biologically, but not so well for record-keeping and global consistency as we traveled more easily across borders.

Enter Pope Gregory XIII. His Gregorian calendar fixed the Leap Year Problem, finally eschewed the lunar system, and officially adopted January 1st as the start to the calendar year. As head of the Roman Catholic Church, this set a precedent for the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1582 the Gregorian calendar was adopted as a replacement/update to the Julian calendar.

Things weren’t going so well for the Catholic Church at that time, though. As the Roman Empire continued to fall, the British Empire rose, as well as a divide between Catholic countries and Protestant countries on the European continent. Many of those non-Catholic areas instead chose a calendar starting on March 25th, basically to thumb their nose at the Catholic regime.

British countries and colonies in particular (including the United States) still used March 25th as the start of the new calendar year, through 1752. I won't even go into the chaos this created in reference to historic dates between January 1st, 1582, and March 25th, 1752. Or talk about the 11 missing days of September 1752 that just *don't exist* in the British empire and colonies!

Of important and special note is, of course, this is all Euro-centric. The rest of the world unfortunately got hauled along for this ride because of colonization, but some countries (notably Nepal, parts of Thailand, Ethiopia, Iran, and parts of Afghanistan) still use their own calendar system.

SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR ME AS A WRITER‽

I’m so glad you asked (and waded through that brief history lesson to this point!).

I don’t know about you, but I have been struggling with this 2023-2024 transition.

It could be the hellscape that was 2023. It could be the death plague winter cold that left me unable to pick up my head for three days straight and unable to speak for more than two minutes without hacking up a lung (sorry Annual Review workshoppers…). It could be the fact that we are all still transitioning out of a global pandemic that absolutely needed to be considered with the greatest cautions, but fucked with our mental and emotional well-being in a way that many of us had no previous experience with. It could be the writing and online industries, the adoption of AI into our livelihoods, and the general disdain commerce has for creative work these days.

I mean…take your pick.

As I dug into this “why am I fighting a season of transition at a time when all I want to do is hole up and barely exist for a few more months,”I became more intrigued.

And it made me wonder: Are we, especially as writers and creatives, doing New Year’s wrong?

I don’t think I can upend the entire Gregorian calendar system at this point. The year will still become a new year on January 1st; there’s no point in fighting that.

But what if we decided to shift our goals and yearly planning and creative pursuits to a time of year that aligns better to the world around us?

WHAT IF WE STARTED OUR WRITER YEAR ON APRIL 1ST INSTEAD OF JANUARY 1ST?

Would you ever consider making such a shift?
Do you think it would make more sense for your creative output and existence?
Is this possible, or is it too much of a shift against the masses of society?

What You Missed on Craft Your Content …

Our articles have the same mission we do — to help you to make your own words even better!

Always a favorite, and I’m sorry to be two weeks late in getting this shared with you. But if you have bookstore or book device gift certificates burning a hole in your pocket after the holidays, check out Our Favorite Writing in 2023, a compilation of the most beloved reads and writing from the entire CYC team.
(From the Archives, December 2022) And if you are new, or perhaps missed it last year, you can catch our favorites in 2022 (and prior years) as well!

CYC Elsewhere…

Other places we’ve popped up around the interwebs.

My aversion to New Year, New You messaging is not a new thing.

In Other Reading This Week …

Need more insights and inspiration for your writing and mindset?

This is an interesting writing experiment and an important message. Every year since 2012, Brendan Leonard has republished “Make 20XX The Year of Maximum Enthusiasm” on Semi-Rad, with few updates. Because every year we should have maximum enthusiasm!
Looking to get involved with a writing organization in 2024? I’m not talking about a writing community (but I will be soon…); I mean large-scale organizations. Writer’s Digest just updated their list of accredited writing organizations to check out.
Curious what the heck happened in the world of book sales and marketing in 2023? Grant Shepherd has you covered over on Written Word Media, with an extensive breakdown for self-publishing (and all the marketing traditional authors have to do these days!).
“What’s your book about?” Hate this question? Of course! Many writers do. Because it means different things to different people! Which is why I loved this take from Barbara Linn Probst over on Writer UNboxed, about how a writer, a reader, and the protagonist would answer the question.
Getting feedback on your writing can be a great “next step” for writers looking to take their craft to the next level. But how do you get feedback that is actually useful for where you are at and what you are looking for? Janna Lopez breaks it all down over on BookBaby.

Weekly Writing Tip …

A quick chance to learn from the masters.

“Some loose ends need to be tied up
but still their threads are part of the tapestry.
Some loose ends need to be re-woven.
Some need to be pulled and
allowed to lead us where they may ...”

― Playwright Shellen Lubin

Untranslatable …

Exquisite words from other languages.

Snerdling [SNER-dill-ing] (n.) – From 18th century English, snerdling is a special sort of cozy situation. It’s when you snuggle down into the blankets to hold off the day a bit longer. Perfect for winter hibernation mode. Sorta synonyms: lie-in, slugabed, lazy morning

This Week’s Writing Resource …

Why not use the tools at your disposal?

.doc to Kindle – This Instagram post has a step-by-step to take your WIP manuscript and send it to your Kindle. Great for reading your manuscript as a book, to take a step back before your next round of edits. (It says it is a Reel, but you don’t need the video. Info in caption.)

For the Upcoming Week …

Because we all need a good chuckle to start things off right!

It’s important to build on our strengths.

’Til next time! ~ Elisa

PS – If you are really invested in this calendar thing like I am, you can see the way the world “fell in line” with the Gregorian calendar system in this Wikipedia entry.