A creative break sparks new ideas

When the gift of time is the best present

A Happy New Year from the moss. I hope that this first letter of 2025 finds you well, and that you have had an enjoyable time over the festive period. As I write this, snow is falling, the fields are white and the hills hidden. It looks set to stay cold and wintry after a bizarrely mild Christmas.

New Year’s Day: winter light and snow showers arriving on a northerly wind

Sometimes the best destinations are unknown.

I came onto Substack with a desire to try to develop a regular writing habit. It took my commitment to a weekly post for this to happen. As the first few months passed these became my letters to you from the moss. Something about this place, and writing, has seeped into my bones and the flow of it has surprised me.

I am filled with ideas but can be a poor finisher. My daily lines, to mark another year passing, have been realized but at some point (October?) I failed to keep up with entering them into my journal.

Before Christmas I bought a small, beautiful, ring binder in which to begin to collate prose written around the moss. It gives me the flexibility to reorder and rearrange, and to interleaf, interject, images. The gap I gave myself as a gift of the season has allowed me to bring out my paints and print a series of small monotypes—literally ‘postcards’ from the moss. And each day, often first thing in the morning, I have let the words percolate and pool. It is a rhythm I am enjoying.

At the back of my mind is the quiet desire that these may lead to another book. Perhaps two, one of writing, one of images. I will now be a little more careful about how many of these pieces I include in my weekly letters; our correspondence will continue, but in parallel I will be growing my folder, my paean to place.

I’ve struggled with the feeling that I should offer ‘more’ to my paid subscribers. I listed possible discounts, exclusive content, but the simple truth is that so much time and energy has gone into my weekly letters over the past year that my mixed media was put to one side, and I have yet to create any new photographic print collections or offers. And I have been reluctant to draw a line between the type and length of what I offer to subscribers.

With the direction I’ve taken over the holidays I now feel that this parallel personal work is something that I can periodically share with those who do choose to support my writing through a paid subscription. What this means will need to evolve, but it feels as if this might deepen, perhaps enrich, our conversation without pressing me down with the weight of my own self-imposed burden to do ‘more’. It also introduces accountability, an incentive and encouragement to keep this up, towards a new output. This feels like a good resolution to make and a hopeful beginning to 2025.

Below, this week’s encore is a preview, a first peek inside my folder. In future I will also share some of my postcards from the moss but this additional writing and art will be for readers with a paid subscription.

Thank you to all of you who visit the moss with me each week. I hope this new year will be kind to you.

Until next time,

This week’s encore: a preview of exclusive insights for paid subscribers

I’m usually fairly punctilious about punctuation but here I chose not to. At the time of writing, from the memory of the morning, it felt like the words should run together.

All words and images are copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted