heart seems hollow at the core.



January 12, 1889.


I have had a very bad time of late. It seems futile to say anything
about it, and the plain man would rub his eyes, and wonder where
the misery lay. I have been perfectly well, and everything has gone
smoothly; but I cannot write. I have begun half-a-dozen books. I
have searched my notes through and through. I have sketched plots,
written scenes. I cannot go on with any of them. I have torn up
chapters with fierce disgust, or have laid them quietly aside.
There is no vitality in them. If I read them aloud to any one, he
would wonder what was wrong--they are as well written as my other
books, as amusing, as interesting. But it is all without energy or
invention, it is all worse than my best. The people are puppets,
their words are pumped up out of a stagnant reservoir. Everything I
do reminds me of something I have done before. If I could bring
myself to finish one of these books, I could get money and praise
enough. Many people would not know the difference. But the real and
true critic would see through them; he would discern that I had
lost the secret. I think that perhaps I ought to be content to work
dully and faithfully on, to finish the poor dead thing, to compose
its dead limbs decently, to lay it out. But I cannot do that,
though it might be a moral discipline. I am not conscious of the
least mental fatigue, or loss of power--quite the reverse. I hunger
and thirst to write, but I have no invention.