Starting to write

Wednesday, February 17th., Victoria Grove, London.

A very productive period. Last week I drafted 7,000 words. When I say drafted I mean that the stuff is rough because that is the method I have at the moment. I know myself and my absurd limitations and I have to get results as best I may, by dodging etc. If I were to begin to write carefully, straight away, weighing and arranging with proper nicety, I should get sick of my work in a week. I can't do much at once and I can't keep on for long even in spurts, without real or sham results for my encouragement. This is due to a lack of sustained determination in my composition. The needed dogged purposefulness is not there. I have found that out and I know that I can't put it there no more than by taking thought I can increase my height. Consequently I have to reckon with it.

So, I divide my task into little portions which look big. Any sort of a draft will do for me, provided it is of proper length. And in the first draft I am content to get down the facts. The facts being down, I have done something, there is a foundation to work upon. Strange that this foundation being laid, I seldom have any desire to alter or amend it. In fact I believe I have a considerable natural gift for arrangement, enhanced by my editing experience, which makes changes of foundation supererogatory. In the first draft I don't pretend to go deep or to arrange minor detail. I only make sure of my general outline as I go along.

The mere writing is appallingly unfinished. It can claim to be grammatical, but nothing more. But I have something to look at. Last week I produced over 35 pages of close writing. I have lifted the thing up to a certain height, whence it can't possibly fall down. The rest of the mountain can be taken in easy stages. I am the sort of writer who has a defined and definable purpose. I go in for unity of theme partly because I like it, and partly because it is easier to get effects with a simple single theme than it is with a complex one. A small man can make a largish sort of effect if he confines himself to one single character, with no relief, and turns it inside out. That is what I intend to do. At the moment I haven't got the creative impulse, or the writing experience, for a big theme, but I fancy that one of these days it will be there, and then we shall see something!