(Bluesky/Instagram: @madeleinefwhite)
Coming into January is always an exciting time. For me, it carries a mixture of fear and anticipation. At its best, there’s a sense of joyful expectancy – all the balls are in the air, and I’m not quite sure where they’ll land.
There is a deep vulnerability in being a writer, in calling yourself a writer and in daring to live a creative life. In a post-trust society that promises the earth for our ideas and words if only we pay this or do that, it can be tempting to retreat into ourselves. Yet if we truly are writers, we must have the courage to dream, to make choices that take us beyond our comfort zones, and to throw those balls into the air anyway. Some will misfire – I know many of mine will – but as long as a few are launched without a fixed outcome, that sense of anticipation, sometimes joyful and sometimes fearful, remains.
So this January, I invite you to consider your choices carefully. What kind of writer are you? What do you want to use your creativity for? One thing is certain: when we make choices rooted in purpose and courage, whether in the act of writing itself or in reaching out to readers, we give ourselves something to look forward to.
I was at a party recently with a number of relatively successful creatives and found myself wondering whether I had the right to call myself a writer in such illustrious company. Through conversation I realised that, while I’m a writer and poet, part of my purpose is also to help shape how writing meets readers and institutions and how trust is built between them. This year, my choice is to embrace the totality of that purpose, understanding that writing is part of who I am, but not all of it – and it’s OK for that to be enough.
You may have guessed that our theme over the coming months is Choices. With that in mind, we warmly invite submissions of prose, fiction and poetry. Be inspired, get connected, embrace whatever shape of writer you are and tell us about it.
Now back to our Write On! programme. As ever, there are lovely things to look forward to this month, not least our podcast interview on Write on! Audio with Sarah Westcott, whose work we featured in print and digital form in our winter issue. If you haven’t done so yet, do take a moment to explore the latest issue of Write On! (see issue 27 here). And, of course, check out our digital Write On! Extra pages, with Jilly Hendersen-Long kicking off 2026 as the first of our five new Thursday Connectors page editors.
As always, remember that what we share is written by and for you: co-creation in action. So please do see our submissions guidelines here. and submit around our spring theme of Choices.
Write On! Audio, the podcast ‘For Writers Everywhere’ connects emerging and established writers to each other, the publishing industry and a wider audience in an audio celebration of diversity, originality and excellence. 
