Skinny Dipping

§72 [24.i.24.a : mercredi] The determined and resourceful V.W. has plucked back 52 Tavistock Square from “the snag in the lease” she mentioned in her 12 January diary entry : some technical point to do with a sublet and £10. In any case, the business is settled now and the Woolfs will be settled in their new digs by March (the month of novelette madness, for me).

I’ve arrived at a very important decision, and like most very important things, it was decided in a moment, a mere flash, a tickling of the inner ear : on Monday, I decided that I would complete work on Mallworld before any more “casting about”. This decision concerns (perhaps) the shape of leadworth (my dream of the serial novel) which I will be unveiling (ha!) ? … soon enough?? coming soon ???

During my vacation (a time of permission to do what I wish rather than what I’m expected to do) … not that I’m proclaiming any resolutions, but my main topic of contemplation was how to become more organized, how to work to a plan. My bee-like ways, dabbing my proboscis into this flower and then into that one, are enjoyable and the honey gets made in vast quantities, but eventually the honey has to find its way into a jar or we’ll all end up with sticky hands. And invent a Plan I did! I constructed a grid, fabricated a conceptual map, populated the fields with keywords, titles, deadlines, goals, objectives, and developed straightforward methods of record keeping and benchmarking to verify and track my progress. This is an extremely adult and serious way to proceed, I thought. But should one be so calculating with one’s play?

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I’m back at Mallworld with a new title: This is Mallworld and V.W. is “back again tomorrow to The Hours” which she was looking at “disconsolately”—oh the cold raw edges of one’s relinquished pages. V.W. plans 6 weeks of writing ahead. I’m with you Virginia! Me too! You get on with The Hours/Mrs Dalloway and I’ll scribble what comes natural: nonsense. / V.W. concludes her diary entry with a note from “Morgan” aka “E.M. Forster” who says : “To whom first but you [he means L.W.] & Virginia should I tell the fact that I’ve put the last words to my novel?” V.W. remarks : “He is moved, as I am on these occasions.” Would I be correct in guessing (since this is 1924) that the novel which Morgan has just last-worded is A Passage to India? (Oh, yes it is!)