Can one describe one's mood as cynical? Perhaps not exactly the correct description for something as subtle as a mood? But it will have to suffice for the time being.

Cynicism is a penalty of advancing years. Life teaches us not to accept things at face value. Love, happiness, joy, and many other good feelings are often based on actual or wilful ignorance of the true state of affairs. Take inspiration. The moment of creation. It can be overwhelming, but it is rarely un-tempered by a feeling that, however original the idea, there is a worm somewhere in the apple.

One learns never to bite too hard. There is only one thing worse than finding a worm in an apple and that is finding half a worm. Cynicism provides a safeguard against enthusiasm, a counterweight to rapture, a shield against disappointment.

I confess that all this self-analysis is the result of a week in which it has felt that winter is a survival course on which the hurdles increase in size and the rewards diminish accordingly. The gloom and perpetual ice, rain or snow just amplify the feeling that spring cannot come too quickly. Its first sign here will be the tiny white snowdrops in the hedgerows and woodlands, then there will be daffodils.

Contrarywise to the climate, winter is of course the best time for writing, and after a burst of writing before Christmas, I am just getting back into the mood.

Not being one of those people who regard writing as a perverse form of self employment and labour at it for a fixed number of hours each day, I find it difficult to achieve the discipline required, and there are always other pressing distractions. Hours spent writing have to be stolen out of the schedule of the ordinary. Shopping, walking dogs, and all the usual domestic minutae which consume so much time and energy. I am not complaining. No one is exactly chomping at the bit for my latest work, and frankly I don't give a damn whether they are or not. I write because I enjoy it, not because some pre-determined schedule. It's not very professional,but so what?

After all, writing is about telling stories, or perhaps about finding a way to let stories tell themselves. I started too late to ever be any good at it, so all I can do is do what I can. The cynic in me says it is the fear of failure which gnaws at the motivation, the optimist that there is time enough to do all I want to. Somewhere between them is the road all writers are doomed to follow.

If this sounds like self-indulgence then so be it. Having given up sugar, one needs something.