In this special New Year's Eve post, we are very pleased to welcome as guest author our good friend and Mark+Fold diary enthusiast, Huma Qureshi, to share her personal thoughts on the rather special moment when one year ends and one new diary begins...
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A New Diary, by Huma Qureshi
My 2025 Diary has been sitting on my bookshelf, its cover burnt orange like a fallen leaf preserved in a flower press, ever since it arrived in November. Though I have been itching to fill it in and have touched its pages lightly, though carefully so as not to leave any creases or marks, it is only now that I give myself permission to begin. It doesn’t feel right to me to simply start writing or ink in important immovable birthday dates the moment a new diary arrives; that feels rushed, heavy-handed, impulsive in a way that I am not when it comes to this. A new diary, especially if it is as handsome as this, deserves the respect of time–by which I mean, ample time set aside to start the act of writing in it, but also the right moment at which to do it. For me, that right moment is always and only ever now, in these slow and sleepy twilight days between one year and the next. I know that I am not the only person who feels like this.
Starting a new Diary at the end of December is quite a ritual
I use my dated diary as a planner and when I start a new one at the end of every December, in anticipation of January, it is quite the ritual, one which my children are familiar with. Mama is preparing, they say. I rather like the way my children describe it, for starting a new diary is preparation and I like how, especially in these days of nothingness, it feels like work in a good, honest sort of way. These inbetween days are a necessary comfort, and I would not change that for anything, but by New Year’s Day I am itching to do something and feel productive; clean the house, pack away the decorations, start a new diary. The newness of it, the decisiveness of folding back the front cover and then smoothing a palm across a creamy blank first page is such a familiar feeling to me, like greeting an old friend. It is so much more than merely admin. There is a quiet thrill to making that first mark, knowing that here it finally is; a chance to begin again.
2025 Diary in Rust (or as Huma calls it 'burnt orange like a fallen leaf preserved in a flower press.'
Breaking in a new Diary: my process
My preparation looks like this: I sit on the floor, for I require space to spread out, and there is always a hot cup of tea to hand but never so close as to risk a spillage. And then there are my tools, an assortment of sharp pencils and fineliners (always thin, always black), an eraser, a ruler and paper-coloured narrow washi tape which I admit I cut to size to cover any mistakes (at the start of a new diary at least, I do so hate making a mistake). I transfer important dates and notes from the back page of this year’s diary into the relevant pages of my new one, those I am sure of in pen, those which remain to be confirmed in pencil. With a work in progress for hopefully what will be a new book, I tentatively pencil in writing deadlines for myself. A countdown motivates me and it feels exciting to commit to a date even if it is one I have plucked out of thin air. Then I double up the work and write out all the family-related entries again, this time on a family Wall Planner where everyone may see them, before finally doing it one last (third) time on my phone.
I know how this may sound. My husband, who is a practical, efficient online calendar sort of tech guy, stopped gently teasing me about this overscrupulousness of mine many years ago, for he sees and understands now that this annual ritual, and the repetitiveness of the task, brings me calm and clears my mind. But more than that, it also feels necessary. A new year is in many ways so arbitrary, the turn of one day to the next no different to all the days before, but to me it is meaningful. I don’t mean in the way of making impossible resolutions or announcing them grandly, or even going out on New Year’s Eve (I can’t recall the last time I did), but I mean in quite simply drawing a line, putting the past in the past, leaving whatever needs to stay behind there, and looking forwards both to the present and beyond.
I take a great deal of satisfaction from flicking through the pages, admiring how neat it all looks
When my diary is newly inputted, I take a great deal of satisfaction from flicking through the pages, admiring how neat it all looks. It is true that this, dare I say it, perfectionism, is at odds with the creative, writerly side of me and indeed the mothering part of me which reminds my children that it is perfectly fine to make mistakes, that mistakes are in fact a good thing because we can learn from them. Writers are after all supposed to embrace their notebooks, let our blank private pages be a space for the beginnings of messy first drafts full of play, experiments and crossings-out. And I believe in that also and practice this too. But I am talking here about a diary, not a notebook, and in my mind there is a clear distinction between the two.
Though I perceive a dated diary to be largely a practical tool, keeping one is no less fulfilling to me than writing privately in a journal. A dated diary is my space to plan, to organise and list. It’s an efficient space to remind myself of the important things that need to be remembered, the bits of life that may not be exciting or creative but need to be done nevertheless, in order to make room for the creativity and excitement to exist in the first place. I need these parts of my life to appear precise and tidy on the page in order to feel like I have a hold on things, even if only for appearance’s sake. (I should point out that the painstaking pristineness in my approach to my diary does tend to wear out and eventually I’ll abandon the washi tape.)
Mark+Fold week-view Diary
A diary is something I can reliably depend upon when everything else falls apart.
As an author, my days can be unpredictable, no matter how much I follow a routine, for I simply cannot always guarantee that I will be able to write something of substance from one day to the next. But a diary, with a to-do list and meetings and appointments penned in, whether professional or personal, all tangible, is something I can reliably depend upon when everything else falls apart. Even if I can’t write the words that need to be written for a work in progress to, well, progress, my diary offers me a framework and rescues me. It gives me things I can do and tick off my list so that I might say yes, all is not lost, I have done something worthwhile afterall today. It holds me to account, and I like that it does. And besides, even in the mundanity of life admin, there can still be so much joy; pencilling in dinner with friends to look forward to, a weekend away or making birthday gift lists for people we love.
In spite of all this, I must add that most of the pages of my new diary will remain empty for a very long time and probably won’t be filled up until the week I arrive at them. I always liken a new year to the feeling of breaking in new shoes. It pays to take it slowly, soften the leather so to speak, so as to avoid the bite of a blister, the sting of a pinch. Filling in my new diary with early plans feels a little like breaking in new shoes too, a gentle tentative way to step forward cautiously into the vast unknown of a brand new year, instead of jumping straight in, unprepared and without direction.
Pages of days, weeks and months, waiting to be one day written upon.
Flicking through my diary now, I see pages and pages of days and days, weeks and months, lines empty, waiting to be one day written upon. I am struck by how lucky I am to live a life that is so full and chaotic and criss-crossing that I need to write it all down just to keep track of it. How lucky and how grateful.
For though it may not always feel like it, it is in fact no small thing to list in your diary the ingredients you might need for a meal you plan to make for someone you love, or to write down what your child might need to pack with them on their first weekend away without you lest they miss you, when really it is you who will miss them too much. No small thing either to make a note of all the films you want to watch, the books you plan to read. All of these lists and plans, they mean something. They say something about life as much as any emotional outpouring in a journal might. They are the brushstrokes that paint a picture of what we did, what we do; how we choose to live.
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Image above top: Huma Qureshi photographed by Mark+Fold founder Amy, summer 2024, on publication of her fourth novel Playing Games. Huma has drafted several of her novels in a Mark+Fold Notebook, which is how she came to be in the Fold.
About Huma Qureshi
Huma Qureshi is the award-winning author of four books, including the memoir How We Met: A Memoir of Love & Other Misadventures, the short story collection Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love and the novel Playing Games.
To hear more from Huma, you can read our interview Face Behind the Workspace with Huma Qureshi, and subscribe to her newsletter, Dear Huma.