A Writer's Diary

by Virginia Woolf

  Art and thought

  What I thought was this: if art is based on thought, what is the transmuting process? I was telling myself the story of our visit to the Hardys, and I began to compose it; that is to say to dwell on Mrs. Hardy leaning on the table, looking out, apathetically, vaguely, and so would soon bring everything into harmony with that as the dominant theme. But the actual event was different.

  Next

  Writing by living people

  I scarcely ever read it. But, owing to his giving me the books, am now reading C. by M. Baring. I am surprised to find it as good as it is. But how good is it? Easy to say it is not a great book. But what qualities does it lack? That it adds nothing to one's vision of life, perhaps. Yet it is hard to find a serious flaw. My wonder is that entirely second rate work like this, poured out in profusion by at least 20 people yearly, I suppose, has so much merit. Never reading it, I get into the way of thinking it nonexistent. So it is, speaking with the utmost strictness. That is, it will not exist in 2026; but it has some existence now, which puzzles me a little. Now Clarissa bores me; yet I feel this is important. And why?

  My own brain

  Here is a whole nervous breakdown in miniature. We came on Tuesday. Sank into a chair, could scarcely rise; everything insipid; tasteless, colourless. Enormous desire for rest. Wednesday—only wish to be alone in the open air. Air delicious—avoided speech; could not read. Thought of my own power of writing with veneration, as of something incredible, belonging to someone else; never again to be enjoyed by me. Mind a blank. Slept in my chair. Thursday. No pleasure in life whatsoever; but felt perhaps more attuned to existence. Character and idiosyncrasy as Virginia Woolf completely sunk out. Humble and modest. Difficulty in thinking what to say. Read automatically, like a cow chewing cud. Slept in chair. Friday: sense of physical tiredness; but slight activity of the brain. Beginning to take notice. Making one or two plans. No power of phrase-making. Difficulty in writing to Lady Colefax. Saturday (today) much clearer and lighter. Thought I could write, but resisted, or found it impossible. A desire to read poetry set in on Friday. This brings back a sense of my own individuality. Read some l^ante and Bridges, without troubling to understand, but got pleasure from them. Now I begin to wish to write notes, but not yet novel. But today senses quickening. No "making up" power yet: no desire to cast scenes in my book. Curiosity about literature returning; want to read Dante, Havelock Ellis and Berlioz autobiography; also to make a looking glass with shell frame. These processes have sometimes been spread over several weeks.

  Proportions changed

  That in the evening, or on colourless days, the proportions of the landscape change suddenly. I saw people playing stool-ball in the meadow; they appeared sunk far down on a flat board; and the downs raised high up and mountainous round them. Detail was smoothed out. This was an extremely beautiful effect: the colours of the women's dresses also showing very bright and pure in the almost untinted surroundings. I knew, also, that the proportions were abnormal—as if I were looking between my legs.

  Second-rate art

  i.e. C., by Maurice Baring. Within it limits, it is not second rate, or there is nothing markedly so, at first go off. The limits are the proof of its non-existence. He can only do one thing; himself to wit; charming, clean, modest, sensitive Englishman. Outside that radius and it does not carry far nor illumine much, all is—as it should be—light, sure, proportioned, affecting even; told in so well bred a manner that nothing is exaggerated, all related, proportioned. I could read this for ever, I said. L. said one would soon be sick to death of it.

  Wandervögeln

  of the sparrow tribe. Two resolute, sunburnt, dusty girls in jerseys and short skirts, with packs on their backs, city clerks, or secretaries, tramping along the road in the hot sunshine at Ripe. My instinct at once throws up a screen, which condemns them: I think them in every way angular, awkward and self-assertive. But all this is a great mistake. These screens shut me out. Have no screens, for screens are made out of our own integument; and get at the thing itself, which has nothing whatever in common with a screen. The screen-making habit, though, is so universal that probably it preserves our sanity. If we had not this device for shutting people off from our sympathies we might perhaps dissolve utterly; separateness would be impossible. But the screens are in the excess; not the sympathy.

  Returning health

  This is shown by the power to make images; the suggestive power of every sight and word is enormously increased. Shakespeare must have had this to an extent which makes my normal state the state of a person blind, deaf, dumb, stone-stockish and fish-blooded. And I have it compared with poor Mrs. Bartholomew almost to the extent that Shakespeare has it compared with me.

  Bank Holiday

  Very fat woman, girl and man spend Bank Holiday—a day of complete sun and satisfaction—looking up family graves in the churchyard. 23 youngish men and women spend it tramping along with ugly black boxes on shoulders and arms, taking photographs. Man says to woman, "Some of these quiet villages don't seem to know it's Bank Holiday at all" in a tone of superiority and slight contempt.

  The married relation

  Arnold Bennett says that the horror of marriage lies in its "dailiness." All acuteness of relationship is rubbed away by this. The truth is more like this: life—say 4 days out of 7—becomes automatic; but on the 5th day a bead of sensation (between husband and wife) forms which is all the fuller and more sensitive because of the automatic customary unconscious days on either side. That is to say the year is marked by moments of great intensity. Hardy's "moments of vision." How can a relationship endure for any length of time except under these conditions?

  Friday, September 3rd

  Women in tea garden at Bramber—a sweltering hot day: rose trellises; white-washed tables; lower middle classes; motor omnibuses constantly passing; bits of grey stone scattered on a paper-strewn greensward, all that's left of the Castle.

  Woman leaning over the table, taking command of the treat, attended by two elder women, whom she pays for to girl waitress (or marmalade coloured fat girl, with a body like the softest lard, destined soon to marry, but as yet only 16 or so).

  WOMAN: What can we have for tea?

  GIRL (very bored, arms akimbo): Cake, bread and butter, tea. Jam?

  WOMAN: Have the wasps been troublesome? They get into the jam—(as if she suspected the jam would not be worth having).

  Girl agrees.

  WOMAN: Ah, wasps have been very prominent this year.

  GIRL: That's right.

  So she doesn't have jam.

  This amused me, I suppose.

  For the rest, Charleston, Tilton,* To the Lighthouse, Vita, expeditions: the summer dominated by a feeling of washing in boundless warm fresh air—such an August not come my way for years; bicycling; no settled work done, but advantage taken of air for going to the river or over the downs. The novel is now easily within sight of the end, but this, mysteriously, comes no nearer. I am doing Lily on the lawn; but whether it's her last lap, I don't know. Nor am I sure of the quality; the only certainty seems to be that after tapping my antennae in the air vaguely for an hour every morning I generally write with heat and ease till 12:30; and thus do my two pages. So it will be done, written over that is, in 3 weeks, I forecast, from today. What emerges? At this moment I'm casting about for an end. The problem is how to bring Lily and Mr. R. together and make a combination of interest at the end. I am feathering about with various ideas. The last chapter which I begin tomorrow is In the Boat: I had meant to end with R. climbing on to the rock. If so, what becomes of Lily and her picture? Should there be a final page about her and Carmichael looking at the picture and summing up R.'s character? In that case I lose the intensity of the moment. If this intervenes between R. and the lighthouse, there's too much chop and change, I think. Could I do it in a parenthesis? So that one had the sense of reading the two things at the same time?

  5th September.

  I shall solve it somehow
, I suppose. Then I must go on to the question of quality. I think it may run too fast and free and so be rather thin. On the other hand, I think it is subtler and more human than Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway. And I am encouraged by my own abundance as I write. It is proved, I think, that what I have to say is to be said in this manner. As usual, side stories are sprouting in great variety as I wind this up: a book of characters; the whole string being pulled out from some simple sentence, like Clara Pater's "Don't you find that Barker's pins have no points to them?" I think I can spin out all their entrails this way; but it is hopelessly undramatic. It is all in oratio obliqua. Not quite all; for I have a few direct sentences. The lyric portions of To the Lighthouse are collected in the 10-year lapse and don't interfere with the text so much as usual. I feel as if it fetched its circle pretty completely this time; and I don't feel sure what the stock criticism will be. Sentimental? Victorian?

  Then I must begin to plan out my book on literature for the Press. Six chapters. Why not groups of ideas, under some rough heading—for example: Symbolism. God. Nature. Plot. Dialogue. Take a novel and see what the competent parts are. Separate this and bring under them instances of all the books which display them biggest. Probably this would pan out historically. One could spin a theory which would bring the chapters together. I don't feel that I can read seriously and exactly for it. Rather I want to sort out all the ideas that have accumulated in me.

  Then I want to write a bunch of "Outlines" to make money (for under a new arrangement, we're to share any money over £200 that I make); this I must leave rather to chance, according to what books come my way. I am frightfully contented these last few days, by the way. I don't quite understand it. Perhaps reason has something to do with it.

  Monday, September 13th

  The blessed thing is coming to an end I say to myself with a groan. It's like some prolonged rather painful and yet exciting process of nature, which one desires inexpressibly to have over. Oh the relief of waking and thinking it's done—the relief and the disappointment, I suppose. I am talking of To the Lighthouse. I am exacerbated by the fact that I spent four days last week hammering out de Quincey, which has been lying about since June; so refused £30 to write on Willa Cather; and now shall be quit in a week I hope of this unprofitable fiction and could have wedged in Willa before going back. So I should have had £70 of my year's £200 ready made by October. (My greed is immense; I want to have £50 of my own in the Bank to buy Persian carpets, pots, chairs, etc.) Curse Richmond, Curse the Times, Curse my own procrastinations and nerves. I shall do Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. Hemans and make something by them however. As for the book—Morgan said he felt "This is a failure," as he finished the Passage to India. I feel—what? A little stale this last week or two from steady writing. But also a little triumphant. If my feeling is correct, this is the greatest stretch I've put my method to, and I think it holds. By this I mean that I have been dredging up more feelings and characters, I imagine. But Lord knows, until I look at my haul. This is only my own feeling in process. Odd how I'm haunted by that damned criticism of Janet Case's "it's all dressing ... technique. (Mrs. Dalloway). The Common Reader has substance." But then in one's strained state any fly has liberty to settle and it's always the gadflies. Muir praising me intelligently has comparatively little power to encourage—when I'm working, that is—when the ideas halt. And this last lap, in the boat, is hard, because the material is not so rich as it was with Lily on the lawn. I am forced to be more direct and more intense. I am making more use of symbolism, I observe; and I go in dread of "sentimentality." Is the whole theme open to that charge? But I doubt that any theme is in itself good or bad. It gives a chance to one's peculiar qualities—that's all.

  Thursday, September 30th

  I wished to add some remarks to this, on the mystical side of this solicitude; how it is not oneself but something in the universe that one's left with. It is this that is frightening and exciting in the midst of my profound gloom, depression, boredom, whatever it is. One sees a fin passing far out. What image can I reach to convey what I mean? Really there is none, I think. The interesting thing is that in all my feeling and thinking I have never come up against this before. Life is, soberly and accurately, the oddest affair; has in it the essence of reality. I used to feel this as a child—couldn't step across a puddle once, I remember, for thinking how strange—what am I? etc. But by writing I don't reach anything. All I mean to make is a note of a curious state of mind. I hazard the guess that it may be the impulse behind another book.* At present my mind is totally blank and virgin of books. I want to watch and see how the idea at first ocurs. I want to trace my own process.

  Tuesday, November 23rd

  I am re-doing six pages of Lighthouse daily. This is not, I think, so quick as Mrs. D: but then I find much of it very sketchy and have to improvise on the typewriter. This I find much easier than re-writing in pen and ink. My present opinion is that it is easily the best of my books: fuller than J.'s R. and less spasmodic, occupied with more interesting things than Mrs. D., and not complicated with all that desperate accompaniment of madness. It is freer and subtler, I think. Yet I have no idea yet of any other to follow it: which may mean that I have made my method perfect and it will now stay like this and serve whatever use I wish to put it to. Before, some development of method brought fresh subjects in view, because I saw the chance of being able to say them. Yet I am now and then haunted by some semi-mystic very profound life of a woman, which shall all be told on one occasion; and time shall be utterly obliterated; future shall somehow blossom out of the past. One incident—say the fall of a flower—might contain it. My theory being that the actual event practically does not exist—nor time either. But I don't want to force this. I must make up my series book.

  1927

  Friday, January 14th

  This is out of order, but I have no new book and so must record here (and it was here I recorded the beginning of the Lighthouse) must record here the end. This moment I have finished the final drudgery. It is now complete for Leonard to read on Monday. Thus I have done it some days under the year and feel thankful to be out of it again. Since October 25th I have been revising and retyping (some parts three times over) and no doubt I should work at it again; but I cannot. What I feel is that it is a hard muscular book, which at this age proves that I have something in me. It has not run out and gone flabby: at least such is my feeling before reading it over.

  Sunday, January 23rd

  Well Leonard has read To the Lighthouse and says it is much my best book and it is a "masterpiece." He said this without my asking. I came back from Knole and sat without asking him. He calls it entirely new—'a psychological poem' is his name for it. An improvement upon Dalloway; more interesting. Having won this great relief, my mind dismisses the whole thing, as usual, and I forget it and shall only wake up and be worried again over proofs and then when it appears.

  Saturday, February 12th

  X's prose is too fluent. I've been reading it and it makes my pen run. When I've read a classic I am curbed and—not castrated; no, the opposite; I can't think of the word at the moment. Had I been writing "Y—" I should have run off whole pools of this coloured water; and then (I think) found my own method of attack. It is my distinction as a writer I think to get this clear and my expression exact. Were I writing travels I should wait till some angle emerged and go for that. The method of writing smooth narration can't be right; things don't happen in one's mind like that. But she is very skilful and golden voiced. This makes me think that I have to read To the Lighthouse tomorrow and Monday, straight through in print; straight through, owing to my curious methods, for the first time. I want to read largely and freely once; then to niggle over details. I may note that the first symptoms of Lighthouse are unfavourable. Roger it is clear did not like "Time Passes"; Harpers and the Forum have refused serial rights; Brace writes, I think, a good deal less enthusiastically than of Mrs. D. But these opinions refer to the rough copy, unrevised. And a
nyhow I feel callous: L.'s opinion keeps me steady; I'm neither one thing nor the other.

  Monday, February 21st

  Why not invent a new kind of play; as for instance:

  Woman thinks ...

  He does.

  Organ plays.

  She writes.

  They say:

  She sings.

  Night speaks

  They miss

  I think it must be something on this line—though I can't now see what. Away from facts; free; yet concentrated; prose yet poetry; a novel and a play.

  Monday, February 28th

  But I intend to work harder and harder. If they—the re-spectables, my friends, advise me against the Lighthouse, I shall write memoirs; have a plan already to get historical manuscripts and write Lives of the Obscure; but why do I pretend I should take advice? After a holiday the old ideas will come to me as usual; seeming fresher, more important than ever; and I shall be off again, feeling that extraordinary exhilaration, that ardour and lust of creation—which is odd, if what I create is, as it well may be, wholly bad.

  Monday, March 14th

  Faith Henderson * came to tea; and, valiantly beating the waters of conversation, I sketched the possibilities which an unattractive woman, penniless, alone, might yet bring into being. I began imagining the position—how she would stop a motor on the Dover road and so get to Dover; cross the channel etc. It struck me, vaguely, that I might write a Defoe narrative for fun. Suddenly between twelve and one I conceived a whole fantasy to be called "The Jessamy Brides"—why, I wonder? I have rayed round it several scenes. Two women, poor, solitary at the top of a house. One can see anything (for this is all fantasy) the Tower Bridge, clouds, aeroplanes. Also old men listening in the room over the way. Everything is to be tumbled in pell mell. It is to be written as I write letters at the top of my speed; on the ladies of Llangollen; on Mrs. Fladgate; on people passing. No attempt is to be made to realise the character. Sapphism is to be suggested. Satire is to be the main note—satire and wildness. The ladies are to have Constantinople in view. Dreams of golden domes. My own lyric vein is to be satirised. Everything mocked. And it is to end with three dots ... so. For the truth is I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books leading whose form is always so closely considered. I want to kick up my heels and be off. I want to embody all those innumerable little ideas and tiny stories which flash into my mind at all seasons. I think this will be great fun to write; and it will rest my head before starting the very serious, mystical poetical work which I want to come next. Meanwhile, before I can touch the Jessamy Brides, I have to write my book on fiction and that won't be done till January, I suppose. I might dash off a page or two now and then by way of experiment. And it is possible that the idea will evaporate. Anyhow this records the odd horrid unexpected way in which these things suddenly create themselves—one thing on top of another in about an hour. So I made up Jacob's Room looking at the fire at Hogarth House; so I made up the Lighthouse one afternoon in the Square here.