Resolutions are ephemeral. In particular, my resolutions to journal every day generally have a half life of about two months, leaving notebooks with baleful, half-empty pages skulking shamefully around the flat for years after.

So when I detoured through the park this morning, coffee and seasonal gingerbread skeleton in hand, and paused on a bench to write, I made no promises to myself that this attempt would be any different. I did however reflect a little on why I find it so hard to be consistent with journalling.

I’m a fiction writer. I love the power that comes with made-up worlds and characters; the power (when things come together) to say something coherent, meaningful, or even beautiful about the world.

Journalling, by contrast, is messy – because real life is messy too. With life, you cannot Control Z, or move a chapter to the void-folder of ‘Cut Scenes’. Life is wondrous, but it doesn’t usually fit neatly in a story arc.

That’s why my journals peter out. It’s because I worry they are just not good: they slip sidelong into the mundane, or the parochial, or the slightly anxious, and there isn’t even a decent magical creature cropping up to keep things interesting.

But yesterday, when listening to one of my favourite authors on an old episode of Desert Island Discs, I heard something that really helped. “Fiction has to be convincing…” said Neil Gaiman to the interviewer, “and life doesn’t.”

So that’s the point. A journal of a person’s actual real life is allowed to be less convincing than fiction. Fiction can be captured coherently – that’s why I love it. Real life can’t – and that’s why I love it too.

My new journal has one page of writing in it. Orange biro, to match the autumn trees. I’ve no idea if it will keep going to when the trees are bare. But right now, in this stray moment of a beautiful, messy life, it is giving me joy.