Writer's Therapy

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Reading: 'WHITES WASTE PAPER' (unpublished), by Joseph Hunter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

I explore the relationship between the physicality in fiction, and the physicality of the actual flesh-and-blood reader engaging with that fiction. Sometimes the intensity of that relationship has made me want to devour things...

Reading from: A Moveable Feast (1964), by Ernest Hemingway

A recent experience with music makes me reflect on the apparent impossiblity of trusting one's one judgement in relation to work you have created. The way it seems one day changes with the weather: something that seems to click now becomes discordant later.

Reading: 'There are no essential differences between things' (unpublished), by Joseph Hunter.

Maybe specific words are only ever an attempt to fix a pattern in the mind that is originally formless. And then, too, this grey area between form and formlessness can be captured in writing.

Reading from: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Following on from thinking about memoir, I explore the idea that 'story truth' in fiction is something beyond fact, a way of organising and even doing justice to the meaning that is usually buried in the messy stuff of real life.

Reading: Tim O'Brien, 'Form', The Things They Carried (1990)

Having recently written a draft of a memoir, I compare writing fiction to creative non-fiction. In terms of drawing from your everyday life, are there perhaps similarities?

Reading from Failure: A Memoir (unpublished, work in progress), by Joseph Hunter

A sudden loss of vital energy due to a brief illness triggers longer term paranoias, so I try to cheer myself up with words of wisdom from an unfashionable old patrician.

Reading from: The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing (2003), by Norman Mailer

There is a kind of music that lives in langauge that can be brought out in certain passages of writing. As somebody who also dabbles in music, this is a quality I look for in good fiction writing.

Reading: extract from Blood Meridian (1985), by Cormac McCarthy.