Virginia Woolf’s diary, 1936

The weather has improved and we have decided to stay till Wednesday. It will now of course rain. But I will make some good resolutions: to read as few weekly…

Seldom have I been more completely miserable than I was about 6:30 last night, reading over the last part of The Years. Such feeble twaddle—such twilight gossip it…

Well, I’m almost through copying the raid scene, I should think for the 13th time. Then it will go tomorrow; and I shall have I think one day’s full holiday— if I…

Getting along rather better. So I steal 10 minutes before lunch. Never have I worked so hard at any book. My aim is not to alter a thing in proof. And I begin to…

It now seems to me so good—still talking about The Years—that I can’t go on correcting. In fact I do think the scene at Witterings is about the best, in that line,…

A very good weekend. Trees coming out: hyacinths; crocuses. Hot. The first spring weekend. Then we walked up to Rat Farm—looked for violets. Still spring here. Am…

Now it’s Sunday and I’m still forging ahead. Done Eleanor in Oxford Street for the 20th time this morning. I’ve plotted it out now and shall have done by Tuesday…

Now will come the season of depression, after congestion, suffocation. The last batch was posted to Clark at Brighton yesterday. L. is in process of reading. I…

After a week of intense suffering—indeed mornings of torture—and I’m not exaggerating—pain in my head—a feeling of complete despair and failure—a head inside like…

A good day—a bad day—so it goes on. Few people can be so tortured by writing as I am. Only Flaubert I think. Yet I see it now, as a whole. I think I can bring it…

I do not wish for the moment to write out the story of the months since I made the last mark here. I do not wish, for reasons I cannot now develop, to analyse that…

I must make some resolutions about this book. I find it extremely difficult. I get into despair. It seems so bad. I can only cling to L.’s verdict. Then I get…

On the whole it has gone better this morning. It’s true my brain is so tired of this job it aches after an hour or less. So I must dandle it, and gently immerse it.…