My sort

  

My Goodreads account.

      When buying A Writer's Diary by Virginia Wolf, I knew that I would fall in love with it. Virginia (we are on a first name basis after how much I learned in this book. She's a soul mate) just speaks to me on every level. Her books bring me to the ground and raise me to the clouds. It is poignant, diligent, lovely, painful, and insightful. She uses her diary as a writing exercise describing people with precision, digging down into their deepest characteristics, illustrating nature with poetry, and working out problems with her books.

     Even though the chapter headers name the years, it felt like I was reading a contemporary (except for the war part anyway). Her diary is not dated, her struggle is every writers. It is shocking how 70 years difference does not exist. This was just her diary, her free thoughts and they are still incredibly relatable. I learned many lessons reading this book and wished for more. This is just another example of how books are able to transcend time and place.  Books teach you something no matter if you realize it or not: the structure of grammar, new perspectives, how to communicate, life lessons, ultimate truths, the power of love. They increase your imagination and work your mind. it's always good to read a book.

Link.

      The book is culled from five volumes of her diary. It is mainly the references to her writing, exercises, and the struggle. The book ends four weeks before she commits suicide and I was struck by how normal it all was. She was not even at her lowest point, but it was not a portrayal of the emotional Virginia but the writing one and it is assumed by popular culture that she committed suicide because of her struggle with writing, the problem of communicating ideas. But, of course, we will never be able to know the real reasons. I was still surprised by the normalcy of her writing in the last few weeks of her life. She is so driven, so observant, and appreciative of her writing, that is is sad to think in a mere four weeks she will no longer be able to write anymore. It was her solace and fortress against the world.

     She writes about the ebb and flow of her writing, the weather, what she sees that was remarkable that day only because she made it so with her words, of people and their inner workings, of the struggle and glory of writing, what she had recently read and the character on the author. She makes all other diaries seem superficial and admonishes herself because she thinks she is being superficial. It is inspiring, making you want to write and follow exactly how she went about her day just to gain a drop of her genius. She turns the simple weather into lyrics and insights.

     This book just reiterates the struggle to grasp words in a tall tree, the attempt of understanding between people.

     My words do not do her's justice and I wish they did. Whether you are a reader, a writer, or a lover of beauty, read this, cherish this. It will do you good.

Virginia and Clive Bell at the beach and a article about their relationship.

Quotes

"If I thought and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that is sneaks up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap." So, just write and edit later. A method she only partially followed herself, but a good way to just get it all out.

"Yet, if one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy?" People can be melancholy creatures and if you are down on the world, it will seem like everyone is awful. This may seem drastic, but we have all been there and this allows us to appreciate the small sparks of intelligence and beauty.

"Unpraised, I find it hard to start writing in the morning; but the dejection lasts only 30 minutes, and once I start I forget all about it. One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, silence there;... the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art."

"In the first place, there it [Night and Day] is out and done with; then I read a bit and liked it; then I have a kind of confidence, that the people whose judgement I value will probably think well of it, which is much reinforced by the knowledge that even if they don't, I shall pick up and start another story on my own."

"I don't take praise or blame excessively to heart, but they interrupt, cast one's eyes backwards, make one wish to explain or investigate."

"Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity, which is worse."

On analyzing a book: "'Ah, you're my sort"--a great compliment. Most people who died 100 years ago are like strangers. One is polite and uneasy with them." And the world comes full circle as I call Virginia "my sort."

"The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gently exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalized; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain."

"It is a general sense of the poetry of existence that overcomes me."

"Arnold Bennett said that the horror of marriage lies in the 'dailiness.' All acuteness of relationship is rubbed away by this. The truth is more like this: life -- say 4 days out of 7 --becomes automatic; but on the 5th day a bead of sensation (between husband and wife) forms which is all the fuller and more sensitive because of the automatic customary unconscious day on either side"

"I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun."

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."

"I mean in having a mind that can express -- no, I mean in having mobilized my being -- learnt to give it complete outcome -- I mean, that I have to some extent forced myself to break every mold and find a fresh form of being, that is of expression, for everything I feel or think. So that when it is working I get the sense of being fully energized -- nothing stunted. But this needs constant effort, anxiety and rush."

"...and Swinnerton's sneers and Mirsky's -- making me feel that I'm hated and despised and ridiculed -- well, this is the only answer: to stick to my ideas. And I wish I need never read about myself or think about myself, anyhow till it's done, but look firmly at my object and think only of expressing it. Oh what a grind it is embodying all these ideas and having perpetually to expose my mind, opened and intensified as it is by the heat of creation, to the blasts of the outer world. It I didn't feel so much, how easy it would be to go on."

"I've been thinking about Censors. How visionary figures admonish us...If I say this, So-and-so will think me sentimental. If that...will think me bourgeois. All books nor seem to me surrounded by a circle of invisible censors."