9 November 1936 – 15 November 1936

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 distracted: I tried, as an anodyne, to take up an article; a memoir; to review a book for The Listener. They make my mind race. I must fix it upon The Years. I must do my proofs—send them off. I must fix my mind on it all the morning. I think the only way is to do that, and then let myself do something else between tea and dinner. But immerse in The Years all the morning—nothing else. If the chapter is difficult, concentrate for a short time. Then write here. But don’t dash off into other writing till after tea. When it is done, we can always ask Morgan.

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. Yes, I think it’s good; in its very difficult way. I wonder if anyone has ever suffered so much from a book as I have from The Years. Once out I will never look at it again. It's like a long childbirth. Think of that summer, every morning a headache, and forcing myself into that room in my nightgown; and lying down after a page: and always with the certainty of failure. Now that certainty is mercifully removed to some extent. But now I feel I don’t care what anyone says so long as I’m rid of it. And for some reason I feel I’m respected and liked. But this is only the haze dance of illusion, always changing. Never write a long book again. Yet I feel I shall write more fiction— scenes will form. But I am tired this morning: too much strain and racing yesterday.