Free A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf

begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; and that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.

    Wednesday, August 16th
    I should be reading
Ulysses,
and fabricating my case for and against. I have read 200 pages so far—not a third; and have been amused, stimulated, charmed, interested, by the first 2 or 3 chapters—to the end of the cemetery scene; and then puzzled, bored, irritated and disillusioned by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. And Tom, great Tom, thinks this on a par with
War and Peace!
An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw? But I think if you are anaemic, as Tom is, there is a glory in blood. Being fairly normal myself I am soon ready for the classics again. I may revise this later. I do not compromise my critical sagacity. I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200.
    For my own part I am laboriously dredging my mind for
Mrs. Dalloway
and bringing up light buckets. I don't like the feeling. I'm writing too quickly. I must press it together. I wrote 4 thousand words of
Reading
in record time, 10 days; but then it was merely a quick sketch of Pastons, supplied by books. Now I break off, according to my quick change theory, to write
Mrs. D.
(who ushers in a host of others, I begin to perceive). Then I do Chaucer; and finish the first chapter early in September. By that time, I have my Greek beginning perhaps, in my head; and so the future is all pegged out; and when
Jacob
is rejected in America and ignored in England, I shall be philosophically driving my plough fields away. They are cutting the corn all over the country, which supplies that metaphor, and perhaps excuses it. But I need no excuses, since I am not writing for the
Lit. Sup.
Shall I ever write for them again?

    Tuesday, August 22nd
    The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life—yes, that's why I disliked so much the irruption of Sydney—one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain. Sydney comes and I'm Virginia; when I write I'm merely a sensibility. Sometimes I like being Virginia, but only when I'm scattered and various and gregarious. Now, so long as we are here, I'd like to be only a sensibility. By the way, Thackeray is good reading, very vivacious, with "touches" as they call them over the way at the Shanks', of astonishing insight.

    Monday, August 28th
    I am beginning Greek again, and must really make out some plan: today 28th:
Mrs. Dalloway
finished on Saturday 2nd Sept.: Sunday 3rd to Friday 8th; start Chaucer. Chaucer—that chapter, I mean, should be finished by Sept. 22 nd. And then? Shall I write the next chapter of
Mrs. D.—
if she is to have a next chapter; and shall it be
The Prime Minister?
which will last till the week after we get back—say October 12 th. Then I must be ready to start my Greek chapter. So I have from today, 28th, till 12 th—which is just over 6 weeks—but I must allow for some interruptions. Now what have I to read? Some Homer: one Greek play: some Plato: Zimmern: Sheppard, as textbook: Bentley's Life: if done thoroughly, this will be enough. But which Greek play? and how much Homer, and what Plato? Then there's the anthology. All to end upon the Odyssey because of the Elizabethans. And I must read a little Ibsen to compare with Euripides—Racine with Sophocles—perhaps Marlowe with Aeschylus. Sounds very learned; but really might amuse me; and if it doesn't, no need to go on.

    Wednesday, September 6th
    My proofs * come every other day and I could