I doubt that I shall ever write another novel after O. I shall invent a new name for them.

Yesterday morning I was in despair: You know that bloody book which Dadie and Leonard extort, drop by drop, from my breast? Fiction, or some title to that effect [Phases of Fiction]. I couldn't screw a word from me; and at last dropped my head in my hands: dipped my pen in the ink, and wrote these words, as if automatically, on a clean sheet: Orlando: A Biography. No sooner had I done this than my body was flooded with rapture and my brain with ideas.<…> it sprung upon me how I could revolutionise biography in a night <…>

I'm glad to be quit this time of writing ‘a novel’ & hope never to be accused of it again.

I sketched the possibilities which an unattractive woman, penniless, alone, might yet bring into being. <…> It struck me, vaguely, that I might write a Defoe narrative for fun. Suddenly between twelve & one I conceived a whole fantasy to be called ‘The Jessamy Brides’ – why, I wonder? I have rayed round it several scenes. Two women, poor, solitary at the top of a house. One can see anything (for this is all fantasy) the Tower Bridge, clouds, aeroplanes. Also old men listening in the room over the way.