Beginning with Memory

Every January carries the quiet pressure to begin again. New goals. New manuscripts. Clean notebooks waiting for ink. But I have learned that the most honest beginnings don’t start with ambition. They start with memory.

Before I outline a chapter or sketch a character, I ask a quieter question: Who is missing? Whose name slipped from the record? Who carried the weight of the story but never stood at its center? Research, for me, is not excavation for novelty. It is restoration.

A new year is not only about what we will create. It is about what we will choose to remember. And remembering well is an act of care.