It's how you shape it

Home for Christmas; wonderful family news; the eternal in the everyday.Reading: 'Walking Home' (Merion West, 2025), by Joseph Hunter

J.W. Turner knew about the sun. Thoughts on anhedonia, and seeing the way out. The daily exercise of the mind; new YouTube follows. A new poem. An old play.Readings: speech from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare; 'The Fighting Temeraire (1838), by Joseph Hunter (unpublished).

Learning the piano is a lesson in craft and art, and forces you to be humble. There is no writing/piano playing analogy, you imagined it.Reading: 'Dream piano' (unpublished), by Joseph Hunter

I visit baby-raising friends, am enchanted, reflect on child-rearing as a creative process and an exercise in the unreliability of time/perception, and re-read some Knausgård.Reading: extract from A Man in Love (2009), by Karl Ove Knausgård.

Marina Abramovitch reminds me that there is a fine line between 'real' life and performance art. And that, sometimes, going out and getting drunk with the one you love is what life is about.Reading: extract from The Birds that are Caught (unpublished), by Joseph Hunter.

New cat. Same writer. More positive? Trying.Reading: 'Her lost children', by Joseph Hunter.

Almost a year has passsed; I have published; I am older; no beauty without mortality; birthday DVD marathons; poetry. Reading: 'History Among the Rocks' (from Kentucky Mountain Farm), by Robert Penn Warren.

A dark night of the soul has me questioning many things: my life, my writing, and my output – but not necessarily in that order. Reading: 'WHITES WASTE PAPER' (unpublished), by Joseph Hunter

I remember the joys of creative collaboration from years gone by. Writing is an inherently solitary pursuit, but that doesn't mean there aren't consolations to be had within that solitude. Reading: Extracts from '10 Rules for Writing Fiction', The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/20/10-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-two)

Writing is habit-forming, which is the good news. The bad news is, that habit is a slippery thing that can be elusive and untrustworthy. Readings: Extracts from the journals of Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Hero's Body (2016) by William Giraldi