A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf Read Free Book Online Page A

enough, but quite unintelligent. I mean by that they don't see that I'm after something interesting. So that makes me suspect that I'm not. And thus I can't get on with
Jacob.
Oh and Lytton's book is out and takes up three columns; praise I suppose. I do not / trouble to sketch this in order; or how my temper sank and sank till for half an hour I was as depressed as I ever am. I mean I thought of never writing any more—save reviews. To rub this in we had a festival party at 41: to congratulate Lytton; which was all as it should be, but then he never mentioned my book, which I suppose he has read; and for the first time I have not his praise to count on. Now if I'd been saluted by the
Lit. Sup.
as a mystery—a riddle, I shouldn't mind; for Lytton wouldn't like that sort of thing, but if I'm as plain as day, and negligible?
    Well, this question of praise and fame must be faced. (I forgot to say that Doran has refused the book in America.) How much difference does popularity make? (I'm putting clearly, I may add, after a pause in which Lottie has brought in the milk and the sun has ceased to eclipse itself, that I'm writing a good deal of nonsense.) One wants, as Roger said very truly yesterday, to be kept up to the mark; that people should be interested and watch one's work. What depresses me is the thought that I have ceased to interest people—at the very moment when, by the help of the press, I thought I was becoming more myself. One does
not
want an established reputation, such as I think I was getting, as one of our leading female novelists. I have still, of course, to gather in all the private criticism, which is the real test. When I have weighed this I shall be able to say whether I am "interesting" or obsolete. Anyhow, I feel quite alert enough to stop, if I'm obsolete. I shan't become a machine, unless a machine for grinding articles. As I write, there rises somewhere in my head that queer and very pleasant sense of something which I want to write; my own point of view. I wonder, though, whether this feeling that I write for half a dozen instead of 1500 will pervert this?—make me eccentric—no, I think not. But, as I said, one must face the despicable vanity which is at the root of all this niggling and haggling. I think the only prescription for me is to have a thousand interests—if one is damaged, to be able instantly to let my energy flow into Russian, or Greek, or the press, or the garden, or people, or some activity disconnected with my own writing.

    Sunday, April 9th
    I must note the symptoms of the disease, so as to know it next time. The first day one's miserable; the second happy. There was an Affable Hawk * on me in the
New Statesman
which at any rate made me feel important (and it's that that one wants) and Simpkin Marshall rang up for a second fifty copies. So they must be selling. Now I have to stand all the twitching and teasing of private criticism which I shan't enjoy. There'll be Roger tomorrow. What a bore it all is!—and then one begins to wish one had put in other stories and left out the
Haunted House,
which may be sentimental.

    Tuesday, April 12th
    I must hurriedly note more symptoms of the disease, so that I can turn back here and medicine myself next time. Well; I'd worn through the acute stage and come to the philosophic semi-depressed, indifferent, spent the afternoon taking parcels round the shops, going to Scotland Yard for my purse, when L. met me at tea and dropped into my ear the astonishing news that Lytton thinks the
String Quartet
"marvellous." This came through Ralph, who doesn't exaggerate, to whom Lytton need not lie; and did for a moment flood every nerve with pleasure, so much so that I forgot to buy my coffee and walked over Hungerford Bridge twanging and vibrating. A lovely blue evening too, the river sky colour. And then there was Roger who thinks I'm on the track of real discoveries and certainly not a fake. And we've broken the record of