12 November 1934 – 18 November 1934

And am now, 10:30 on Thursday morning, November 15th, about to tackle rereading and re-writing The Pargiters: an awful moment. 12:45. Well, that horrid plunge has been made and I’ve started re-writing the Ps. Lord, Lord! Ten pages a day for 90 days. Three months. The thing is to contract: each scene to be a scene: much dramatised: contrasted: each to be carefully dominated by one interest: some generalised. At any rate this releases the usual flood and proves that only creating can bring about proportion: now, damnably disagreeable, as I see it will be—compacting the vast mass—I am using my faculties again, and all the flies and fleas are forgotten. A note: despair at the badness of the book: can’t think how I ever could write such stuff—and with such excitement: that’s yesterday: today I think it good again. A note, by way of advising other Virginias with other books that this is the way of the thing: up down up down—and Lord knows the truth.