“I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just re-read my year’s diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles. Still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest type-writing, if I stopped and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap.”

~*~ Virginia Woolf ~*~
April 20, 1919

This quote has stuck with me my whole writing life, 50 years or so (I will be 68 on Saturday but I have written seriously since I was 9. Writing saved my life enduring, at such a young age and until I was about 18, serious sexual and emotional abuse.) I wrote stories, poems, essays, but the thing I mainly did was keep diaries. At one point, around 50, I had almost 500 diaries burned, a whole other story, mainly because I had been so painfully honest about everything I didn’t want my children to read them. But Virginia Woolf was a great teacher, a muse, and someone I admired in a bit of a complex way. I had read all of her books, reread, many times, her diaries and letters, but the thing that I was mostly drawn to, as a child of longterm abuse and lifelong mental health issues, was how she dealt with being creative while mentally ill. She produced masterpieces, but it didn’t end well for her as we all know. I wanted to learn from her how to write successfully without having to end up walking into the River Ouse with my pockets filled with stones. I almost ended up there, not in the Ouse but in my own version of ending things because I felt I could bear no more, but something always pulled me back. And the days of wanting to end my life are long past.

I loved so very much of her work, who could not love Mrs. Dalloway for example? but it was the diaries and the letters that held my heart. That was so many years ago. Shreds, torn pieces from notebooks, memories of reading and writing non-stop over endless cappuccinos in cafés which is the way I wrote most of my life before agoraphobia crept in and finally took hold, but this quote… diamonds in the dustheap, I have used over and over in my writings, written countless times in my own journals as a reminder, and now, as I turn 68 in 2 days and am writing a book unlike anything I have ever written before, they all come back to me. Virginia whispers in my ear, “Look for the diamonds darling, find the diamonds, it’s all you need to do.”

Too, her admonition, “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” gives me courage. It’s not too late for me. I can return to my roots as a serious writer at 68, and I needn’t hurry, or sparkle, or be anyone but myself. And there are diamonds, so many diamonds in the dustheap of my life. I can only, now, as I grow older, see them shimmering in the dross of years past. Too, I think of it as squinting my eyes to see the lost images under layers of paint in an old painting. Pentimento. I have always loved that word and the idea that though time may have painted over so many lost pieces of my life, they still show through in the right light.

And so I am in search of diamonds. Not hurrying, not looking for the shiny objects that were the sparkling moments of my life, but the moments that shimmer, briefly, through the hours of my days now, as well as pieces of lost memories. I wake up each day to capture a thought, a revelation, a little sketch, a gentle breeze on my cheek sitting on my deck watching the birds and the squirrels. I want to record the life of an old woman who, though disabled and living in solitude and silence, finds the diamonds still available to her in the life she lives now. They are there, they are all around in every single day, like the blowsy pink rose sitting here on my desk, so fragrant, from the garden I planted and can no longer tend. But it is there, still, to enjoy, and the sandalwood candle burning beside me, and my small, soft, cuddly Molly who sleeps snuggled into me after I cover her with kisses, and the old books I am pulling off the shelves again to reread. Diamonds. So many diamonds. And, writing longhand, I capture them with the tip of my pen.