Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Samuel Pepys, 1 January 1662

"Waking this morning out of my sleep on a sudden, I did with my elbow hit my wife a great blow over her face and nose, which waked her with pain, at which I was sorry, and to sleep again."

Virginia Woolf, 1 January 1915

"We were kept awake last night by New Year Bells. At first I thought they were ringing for a victory."

Adrian Mole, 1 January 1983

"New Year's Day. These are my New Year's resolutions:

1. I will revise for my 'O' Levels at least two hours a night. 2. I will stop using my mother's Buff-Puff to clean the bath. 3. I will buy a suede brush for my coat. 4. I will stop thinking erotic thoughts during school hours. 5. I will oil my bike once a week. 6. I will try to like Bert Baxter once again. 7. I will pay my library fines (88 pence) and rejoin the library. 8. I will get my mother and father together again. 9. I will cancel the Beano."

How many diaries, journals and blogs will be started with enthusiasm today? And how many will survive longer than the year's first hangover; the blank pages and absent postings a reminder of the demands of daily life or a lack of resolve? Let's face it, the discipline of writing on a regular basis can be very demanding but it has it rewards not least of which is the satisfaction of finding one's voice. If this is done with honesty, without fear, the results can be valuable. As Alan Clark, author of a notorious series of late twentieth-century British political and social diaries wrote:

"Sometimes lacking in charity; often trivial; occasionally lewd; cloyingly sentimental, repetitious, whingeing and imperfectly formed. For some readers the entries may seem to be all of these things. But they are real diaries."

So, start writing, get blogging in 2003. Happy New Year!