Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted people’s parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
Working in solitude: a necessary gift (as well as torment). Sending love to you.
ReplyDeleteVery yes. xo
ReplyDeleteSo true, so true.
ReplyDeleteI must be moderately familiar with the rigours of composition then.
ReplyDeleteThat captures it exactly!
ReplyDeleteyes...and when it finished and done and you sigh with relief...you begin to dream of the next one.
ReplyDeleteYep, that's pretty accurate!
ReplyDeleteRe. your question on my blog, I saw the Robert Frank story but I haven't read it yet. Hopefully I'll get to it tonight.
Thinking of you there and how you are probably laughing and crying.
ReplyDeleteBut that's good, right?
So true. And now you've given me the push I needed to return to Orlando - I left midway over a year ago and it's been out in full view beckoning ever since.
ReplyDelete