The Waves

"By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream" - Virginia Woolf

Since I should be studying, this will not, I fear, be a well thought-out post, but I thought I should post something, because three months sans updating my blog is pathetic!

I have just started reading The Waves. It's not what I was expecting. Somehow Virginia Woolf's work is always different from one book to the next - properly growing as a writer, which is wonderful to see. (And encouraging for one's own reading, to notice it!) The Waves is set out almost like a play. In italics there will be description of the sea, a house, other surrounds. Then in regular type are the monologues of the cast, the six people the story follows through their lives. I love the dreamer Rhoda the most. Bernard started out very likeable, with his constant storytelling, but by the time he gets to university (which is where I'm upto now), he's so conceited! Constantly thinking about what his biographer will write about him, and so shaping his behaviour and writing by what other people think of him! Atrocious behaviour!

But then, what makes us think that people ever do things without feelings of self-consciousness? Are we not always thinking about how others see us? That's part of living in a community, isn't it? Part of being social creatures.

Still, I most like Virginia Woolf's advice that we write exactly what we like, and not use our craft to try and impress other people. What did she write exactly, Google? "So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. " Isn't it funny how the quote and what you've thought about the quote get muddled together in your mind...?

"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself." -VW