A Writer's Diary (34 page)

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 nonresistance. 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 some time 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
after 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, theorising about life; never living. Roger always down in the succulent valleys, living. But 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—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.

Monday, December 30th

And today, no it's no go. I can't write a word: too much headache. Can only look back at
The Years
as an inaccessible Rocky Island; which I can't explore, can't even think of. At Charleston yesterday. The great yellow table with very few places. Reading Roger I became haunted by him. What an odd posthumous friendship—in some ways more intimate than any I had in life. The things I guessed are now revealed; and the actual voice gone.

I had an idea—I wish they'd sleep—while dressing—how to
make my war book
^*
—to pretend it's all the articles editors have asked me to write during the past few years—on all sorts of subjects—Should women smoke: Short skirts: War etc. This would give me the right to wander; also put me in the position of the one asked. And excuse the method: while giving continuity. And there might be a preface saying this, to give the right tone. I think that's got it. A wild wet night—floods out: rain as I go to bed: dogs barking: wind battering. Now I shall slink indoors I think and read some remote book.

Friday, January 3rd

I began the year with three entirely submerged days, headache, head bursting, head so full, racing with ideas; and the rain pouring; the floods out; when we stumbled out yesterday the mud came over my great rubber boots; the water squelched in my soles; so this Christmas has been, as far as country is concerned, a failure, and in spite of what London can do to chafe and annoy I'm glad to go back and have, rather guiltily, begged not to stay here another week. Today it is a yellow grey foggy day; so that I can only see the hump, a wet gleam, but no Caburn. I am content though because I think that I have recovered enough balance in the head to begin
The Years,
I mean the final revision on Monday. This suddenly becomes a little urgent, because for the first time for some years, L. says I have not made enough to pay my share of the house, and have to find £70 out of my hoard. This is now reduced to £700 and I must fill it up. Amusing, in its way, to think of economy again. But it would be a strain to think seriously; and worse—a brutal interruption—had I to make money by journalism. The next book I think of calling
Answers to Correspondents
... But I must not at once stop and make it up. No. I must find a patient and quiet method of soothing that excitable nerve to sleep until
The Years
is on the table—finished. In February? Oh the relief—as if a vast—what can I say—bony excrescence—bag of muscle—were cut out of my brain. Yet it's better to write that than the other. A queer light on my psychology. I can no longer write for papers. I must write for my own book. I mean I at once adapt what I'm going to say, if I think of a newspaper.