Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  Wednesday, July 17th.

  Just now I finished my first wild re-typing and find the book comes to 740 pages: that is 148,000 words; but I think I can shorten: all the last part is still rudimentary and wants shaping; but I’m too tired in the head to do it seriously this moment.

  I think all the same I can reduce it; and then ? Dear me.

  I see why I fled, after The Waves, to Flush. One wants simply to sit on a bank and throw stones. I want also to read with a free mind. And to let the wrinkles smooth themselves out. Susie Buchan, Ethel, then Julian - so I talked from 4.30 till 1 a.m. with only two hours for dinner and silence.

  I think I see that the last chapter should be formed round N.’s speech: it must be much more formal; and I think I see how I can bring in interludes - I mean spaces of silence, and poetry and contrast.

  Friday, July 19th.

  No. I go on getting preliminary headaches. It is no good trying to do the last spurt, which should be much like a breeze in the heavy elms, these last days here: yes, a wind blowing in the trees that are thick with green leaves. For there must be movement as well as some weight, something for the breeze to lift.

  Friday, August 16th.

  I cannot make a single note here, because I am so terrifically pressed re-writing - yes, typing out again at the rate, if possible, of 100 pages a week, this impossible eternal book. I work without looking up till one; which it now is, and therefore I must go in, leaving a whole heap of things unsaid; so many people, so many scenes, and beauty, and a fox and sudden ideas.

  Wednesday, August 21st.

  Up in London yesterday. And I saw this about myself in a book at The Times - the most patient and conscientious of artists - which I think is true, considering how I slave at every word of that book. My head is like a like a - pudding is it - something that mildly throbs and can’t breed a word at the end of the morning. I begin fresh enough. And I sent off the first 20 pages or so to Mabel yesterday.

  Margery Fry comes on Friday with her hands full of papers, she says. Another book. Have I the indomitable courage to start on another? Think of the writing and re-writing. Also there will be joys and ecstasies though. Again very hot. I am going to re-paint this room. Went to Carpenters yesterday and chose chintzes. Is this worth writing? Perhaps.

  Thursday, September 5th.

  I’ve had to give up writing The Years - that’s what it’s to be called - this morning. Absolutely floored. Can’t pump up a word. Yet I can see, just, that something’s there; so I shall wait, a day or two, and let the well fill. It has to be damned deep this time. 740 pages in it. I think, psychologically, this is the oddest of my adventures. Half my brain dries completely; but I’ve only to turn over and there’s the other half, I think, ready, quite happily to write a little article. Oh if only anyone knew anything about the brain. And, even today, when I’m desperate, almost in tears looking at the chapter, unable to add to it, I feel I’ve only got to fumble and find the end of the ball of string - some start off place, someone to look at [?] perhaps - no, I don’t know - and my head would fill and the tiredness go. But I’ve been waking and worrying.

  Friday, September 6th.

  I am going to wrap my brain in green dock leaves for a few days: 5, if I can hold out; till the children, L.’s nieces, have gone. If I can - for I think a scene is forming. Why not make an easier transition: Maggie looking at the Serpentine say; and so avoid that abrupt spring? Isn’t it odd that this was the scene I had almost a fit to prevent myself writing? This will be the most exciting thing I ever wrote, I kept saying. And now it’s the stumbling block. I wonder why? Too personal, is that it? Out of key? But I won’t think.

  Saturday, September 7th.

  A heavenly quiet morning reading Alfieri by the open window and not smoking. I believe one could get back to the old rapture of reading if one did not write. The difficulty is, writing makes one’s brain so hot it can’t settle to read; and then when the heat goes, I’m so tired in the head I can only skirmish. But I’ve stopped two days now The Years: and feel the power to settle calmly and firmly on books coming back at once. John Bailey’s life, come today, makes me doubt though. What? Everything. Sounds like a mouse squeaking under a mattress. But I’ve only just glanced and got the smell of Lit. dinner, Lit. Sup., lit this that and the other - and one remark to the effect that Virginia Woolf of all people has been given Cowper by Desmond and likes it! I, who read Cowper when I was 15 — d — d nonsense.

  Thursday, September 12th.

  Mornings which are neither quiet nor heavenly, but mixed of hell and ecstasy: never have I had such a hot balloon in my head as re-writing The Years: because it’s so long; and the pressure is so terrific. But I will use all my art to keep my head sane. I will stop writing at 11.30 and read Italian or Dryden and so dandle myself along. To Ethel at Miss Hudson’s yesterday. As I sat in the complete English gentleman’s home, I wondered how anybody could tolerate that equipage; and thought how a house should be portable like a snail shell. In future perhaps people will flirt out houses like little fans; and go on. There’ll be no settled life within walls. There were endless clean, well repaired rooms. A maid in a cap. Cakes on pagoda trays. A terrible array of glossy brown furniture and books - red sham leather. Many nice old rooms, but the manor house has been embellished and made of course self consciously elaborate. A ballroom; a library - empty. And Miss Hudson all brushed up with her Pekinese, a competent ex-mayor of Eastbourne, with waved grey hair; and all so neat and stout; and the silver frames askew; and the air of order, respectability, commonplace. ‘I’m going to call on the vicar’s wife.’ Ethel immensely red and stout: churning out, poor old woman, the usual indefatigable egotism about deafness and her Mass. She must have a scene every six months. No. But of course, to go deaf, to be 76 - well, back to Charleston with Eve and Angelica.

  Friday, September 13th.

  What a combination for the superstitious! Driving off to visit Margaret and Lilian at Dorking: and I have got into a mild flood I think with The Years. The difficulty is always at the beginning of chapters or sections where a whole new mood has to be caught, plumb in the centre Richmond accepts my Marryat and thanks me for his poor little knighthood!

  Wednesday, October 2nd.

  Yesterday we went to the L.P. meeting at Brighton and, of course, though I have refused to go again this morning, I am so thrown out of my stride that I can’t hitch on to The Years again. Why? The immersion in all that energy and all that striving for something that is quite oblivious of me; making me feel that I am oblivious of it. No, that’s not got it. It was very dramatic. Bevin’s attack on Lansbury. Tears came to my eyes as L. spoke. And yet he was posing I felt, acting, unconsciously, the battered Christian man. Then Bevin too acted I suppose. He sank his head in his vast shoulders till he looked like a tortoise. Told L. not to go hawking his conscience round. And what is my duty as a human being? The women delegates were very thin voiced and unsubstantial. On Monday one said It is time we gave up washing up. A thin frail protest but genuine. A little reed piping, but what chance against all this weight of roast beef and beer - which she must cook? All very vivid and interesting; but overlapping: too much rhetoric, and what a partial view: altering the structure of society; yes, but when it’s altered? Do I trust Bevin to produce a good world when he has his equal rights? Had he been born a duke... My sympathies were with Salter who preached non-resistance. He’s quite right. That should be our view. But then if society is in its present state? Happily, uneducated and voteless, I am not responsible for the state of society. These are some of the murmurs that go round my head, and distract me from what is, after all, my work. A good thing to have a day of disturbance - two days even — but not three. So I didn’t go; and can’t really write. However I will make myself when I’ve done this. Odd the enormous susceptibility of my mind to surface impressions: how I suck them in and let them swirl about. And how far does anybody’s single mind or work matter? Ought we all to be engaged in altering the structure of society
? Louie said this morning she had quite enjoyed doing for us, was sorry we were going. That’s a piece of work too in its way. And yet I can’t deny my love of fashioning sentences. And yet... L. has gone there and I daresay I’ll discuss it with him. He says politics ought to be separate from art. We walked out in the cold over the marsh and discussed this. The fact is too my head easily tires. Yes, too tired to write.

  Tuesday, October 15th.

  Since we came back I have been in such full flush, with Years all the morning, Roger between tea and dinner, a walk, and people, that here’s a blank. And I only scamp Roger this evening because I wore a hole in my back yesterday; couldn’t write this morning; and must go up and receive Miss Grueber (to discuss a book on women and fascism - a pure have yer on as Lottie would say) in ten minutes. Yes, it has been 10 days of calm full complete bliss. And I thought how I shall hate it. Not a bit. London is quiet, dry, comfortable. I find my dinner cooked for me. No children screaming. And the sense of forging ahead, easily, strongly (this petered out today) at The Years. Three days I got into wild excitement over The Next War. Did I say the result of the L.P. at Brighton was the breaking of that dam between me and the new book, so that I couldn’t resist dashing off a chapter; stopped myself; but have all ready to develop - the form good I think - as soon as I get time? And I plan to do this sometime this next spring, while I go on accumulating Roger. This division is by the way perfect and I wonder I never hit on it before - some book or work for a book that’s quite the other side of the brain between times. It’s the only way of stopping the wheels and making them turn the other way, to my great refreshment and I hope improvement. Alas, now for Grueber.

  Wednesday, October 16th.

  What I have discovered in writing The Years is that you can only get comedy by using the surface layer - for example, the scene on the terrace. The question is can I get at quite different layers by bringing in music and painting together with certain groupings of human beings? This is what I want to try for in the raid scene: to keep going and influencing each other: the picture; the music; and the other direction - the action - I mean character telling a character - while the movement (that is the change of feeling as the raid goes on) continues. Anyhow, in this book I have discovered that there must be contrast; one strata or layer can’t be developed intensively, as I did I expect in The Waves, without harm to the others. Thus a kind of form is, I hope, imposing itself, corresponding to the dimensions of the human being; one should be able to feel a wall made out of all the influences; and this should in the last chapter close round them at the party so that you feel that while they go on individually it has completed itself. But I haven’t yet got at this. I’m doing Crosby - an upper air scene this morning. The rest of going from one to another seems to me to prove that this is the right sequence for me at any rate. I’m enjoying the sequence, without that strain I had in The Waves.

  Tuesday, October 22nd.

  I am again held up in The Years by my accursed love of talk. That is to say, if I talk to Rose Macaulay from 4-6.30: to Elizabeth Bowen from 8-12 I have a dull heavy hot mop inside my brain next day and am a prey to every flea, ant, gnat. So I have shut the book - Sal and Martin in Hyde Park - and spent the morning typing out Roger’s memoirs. This is a most admirable sedative and refresher. I wish I always had it at hand. Two days rest of that nerve is my prescription; but rest is hard to come by. I think I shall refuse all invitations to chatter parties till I’m done. Could it only be by Christmas! For instance, if I go to Edith Sitwell’s cocktail this evening I shall only pick up some exacerbating picture: I shall froth myself into sparklets; and there’ll be the whole smoothing and freshening to begin again. But alter The Years is done then I shall go everywhere: and expose every cranny to the light. As it is, who doesn’t come here? Every day this week I must talk. But in my own room I’m happier, I think. So I will now plod quietly through the Bridges letters and perhaps begin to arrange all Helen’s tangled mass.

  Sunday, October 27th.

  Adrian’s birthday, it strikes me. And we asked him to dine. No, I will not hurry this book. I’m going to let every scene shape fully and easily in my hands, before sending it to be typed, even if it has to wait another year. I wonder why time is always allowed to harry one. I think it rather good this morning. I’m doing Kitty’s party. And in spite of the terrific curb on my impatience - never have I held myself back so drastically - I’m enjoying this writing more fully and with less strain - and what’s the word? - I mean it’s giving me more natural pleasure than the others. But I have such a pressure of other books kicking their heels in the hall it’s difficult to go on very slowly. Yesterday we walked across Ken Wood to Highgate and looked at the two little old Fry houses. That’s where Roger was born and saw the poppy. I think of beginning with that scene. Yes, that book shapes itself. Then there’s my next war - which at any moment becomes absolutely wild, like being harnessed to a shark; and I dash off scene after scene. I think I must do it directly The Years is done. Suppose I finish The Years in January: then dash off the War (or whatever I call it) in six weeks: and do Roger next summer?

  Monday, November 18th.

  It struck me tho’ that I have now reached a further stage in my writer’s advance. I see that there are four? dimensions: all to be produced, in human life: and that leads to a far richer grouping and proportion. I mean: I; and the not I; and the outer and the inner - no I’m too tired to say: but I see it: and this will affect my book on Roger. Very exciting, to grope on like this. New combination in psychology and body - rather like painting. This will be the next novel, after The Years.

  Thursday, November 21st.

  Yes, but these upper air scenes get too thin. Reflection after a morning of Kitty and Edward in Richmond. At first they’re such a relief though after the other that one gets blown - flies ahead. The thing is to take it quietly: go back: and rub out detail; too many ‘points’ made; too jerky, and as it were talking ‘at’. I want to keep the individual and the sense of things coming over and over again and yet changing. That’s what’s so difficult, to combine the two.

  Wednesday, November 27th.

  Too many specimen days - so I can’t write. Yet, heaven help me, have a feeling that I’ve reached the no man’s land that I’m after; and can pass from outer to inner and inhabit eternity. A queer very happy free feeling, such as I’ve not had at the finish of any other book. And this too is a prodigious long one. So what does it mean? Another balk this morning; can’t get the start off of the last chapter right. What’s wrong I don’t know. But I needn’t hurry. And the main thing is to let ideas blow easily; and come softly pouring. And not to be too emphatic. Of course to step straight into the middle of a new character is difficult: North: and I’m a little exacerbated; meant to have a quiet week, and here’s Nelly C. and Nan Hudson both asking to come; and will I ring up; and Nan has a Turkish friend. But I will not be rushed. No.

  Saturday, December 28th.

  It’s all very well to write that date in a nice clear hand, because it begins this new book, but I cannot disguise the fact that I’m almost extinct, like a charwoman’s duster; that is my brain; what with the last revision of the last pages of The Years. And is it the last revision? And why should I lead the dance of the days with this tipsy little spin? But in fact I must stretch my cramped muscles: it’s only half past eleven on a damp grey morning, and I want a quiet occupation for an hour. That reminds me - I must divine some let down for myself that won’t be too sudden when the end is reached. An article on Gray I think. But how the whole prospect will take different proportions, once I’ve relaxed this effort. Shall I ever write a long book again - a long novel that has to be held in the brain at full stretch - for close on three years? Nor do I even attempt to ask if it’s worth while. There are mornings so congested I can’t even copy out Roger. Goldie depresses me unspeakably. Always alone on a mountain top asking himself how to live, theorizing about life; never living. Roger always down in the succulent valleys, living. B
ut what a thin whistle of hot air Goldie lets out through his front teeth. Always live in the whole, life in the one: always Shelley and Goethe, and then he loses his hot water bottle; and never notices a face or a cat or a dog or a flower, except in the flow of the universal. This explains why his highminded books are unreadable. Yet he was so charming, intermittently.

  Sunday, December 29th.

  I have in fact just put the last words to The Years - rolling, rolling, though it’s only Sunday and I allowed myself till Wednesday. And I am not in such a twitter as usual. But then I meant it to end calmly - a prose work. And is it good? That I cannot possibly tell. Does it hang together? Does one part support another? Can I flatter myself that it composes; and is a whole? Well there still remains a great deal to do. I must still condense and point: give pauses their effect, and repetitions, and the run on. It runs in this version to 797 pages: say 200 each (but that’s liberal) it comes to roughly 157,000 - shall we say 140,000. Yes, it needs sharpening, some bold cuts and emphases. That will take me another T I don’t know how long. And I must subconsciously wean my mind from it finally and prepare another creative mood, or I shall sink into acute despair. How odd - that this will all fade away and something else take its place. And by this time next year I shall be sitting here with a vast bundle of press cuttings - no; not in the flesh I hope: but in my mind there will be the usual chorus of what people have said about this mass of scribbled typewriting, and I shall be saying, That was an attempt at that: and now I must do something different. And all the old, or new, problems will be in front of me. Anyhow the main feeling about this book is vitality, fruitfulness, energy. Never did I enjoy writing a book more, I think: only with the whole mind in action: not so intensely as The Waves.