He soon perceived, however, that the battles which Sir Miles and the
rest had waged against armed knights to win a kingdom, were not half so
arduous as this which he now undertook to win immortality against the
English language. 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
his 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.

Autore: Virginia Woolf