October 1927

[...] having done my last article for the Tribune, & now being free again.
And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 & continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita [sackville-west]; only with a change about from one sex to another.

This is a book, I think I have said before, which I write after tea. [...] It is to be a small book, & written by Christmas.

I thought I could combine it with Fiction, but once the mind gets hot it cant stop; I walk making up phrases; sit, contriving scenes; am in short in the thick of the greatest rapture known to me; from which I have kept myself since last February, or earlier.
Talk of planning a book, or waiting for an idea! This one came in a rush; I said to pacify myself, being bored & stale with criticism, [...]

virginia woolf, diary