After all the hoopla of Christmas, January can be a huge letdown. New Year’s Day is a major holiday, but since it’s on the first day of the month, it feels like just an extension of Christmas. But release the idea that the first month of the year is boring, and let January inspire a story.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
At the libraries where I worked, this always seemed a strange time to me. Half the staff was gone on vacation days, so nothing significant could get done. Customer visits dropped off, making it a good week to accomplish those little jobs that had piled up all year. But the atmosphere was one of waiting — waiting for the thrill of Christmas to wear off, waiting for the day of January 1. Such an in between time would be a good setting for characters to wrap up old business or experience something strange or unusual.
New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day
The start of the year seems ready made to inspire fantastic stories. Richard Matheson wrote a fantasy short story. “Deadline”, about a man who lives and grows old in one year, born at the first tick of New Year’s Day and dying on the last second.
One superstitions I always remember about New Year’s Day is first-footing, a belief, which according to Wikipedia, comes from Scotland and Northern England. The first person to enter a home on New Year’s Day will bring either good or bad luck in the coming year, depending upon such things as gender and appearance. A tall man with dark hair is considered good luck. Agatha Christie uses this superstition to help solve a ten-year-old death in the short story, “The Coming of Mr. Quin” in the book The Mysterious Mr. Quin.
I’ve also read another short story, many years ago, about a man who waits outside a cemetery to talk to his dead father because he believes the living can speak to the dead on either Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. I can’t remember which eve it is. It’s a wonderful short story and I have never been able to find it again. Ray Bradbury may be the author. If anyone knows this story, please tell me!
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
A perfect setting for exploring race relations. Since most kids have the day off school, and the weather is often cold and snowy, a children’s story or middle-grade fiction book about race relations concerning kids having fun on their day off seems appropriate.
Weather
Although the days are getting longer, you can’t tell it in January. The dark and the cold are suitable for any gritty or grim tale, whether urban, suburban, or rural. The weather especially lends itself to stories of survival. For more on using winter weather as inspiration, click here.
The reason January doesn’t get me down is that it’s the Birthday Month at my house. All my kids and I were born in January. So we have several small celebrations at home and one big one with extended family to look forward to.
Do you have a month with special, personal significance? Maybe it’s because of your family, friends, job, or where you live. Such a personal celebration can provide loads of inspiration.
How can you let January inspire a story?