I go wandering that way—sometimes I sit so for an hour; and then suddenly I leap up with a cry. But I may try all I please—I don't care anything about the work—it doesn't stir me—the verses I think of make me sick. And then I remember that I have only so many weeks more; and what it will mean to fail; and that makes me desperate, but doesn't help.
When I have stopped at some resting-place in the poem, I can get going again. But now I have stopped in the middle of a climax; and the number of times that I have read that last line, trying to find another—Great heavens!
But I can not find another word. I am in despair.
I know perfectly well what I shall do, only I am a coward, and do not do it. I shall stay in this state till my rage has heaped itself up enough and breaks through everything at last. And then I shall begin to hammer myself! to swear at myself in a way that would make a longshoreman turn white. And I shall spend perhaps two or three hours—perhaps two or three days—doing that, until I am quite in a white heat; and then—I shall go to my work.
That is the price I pay for being distracted.
May 11th.
I said to myself the day before yesterday—with a kind of a dry sob—“I can't do it! I can't do it!”
Oh how tormented I am by noises—noises! What am I not tormented by? Some days ago I was writing in a frenzy—and the landlady came for her rent. And the horrible creature standing there, talking at me! “So lonely!—don't ever see people! Mrs. Smithers was a-saying—” Oh, damn Mrs. Smithers!