December 2, 1933

Since Saturday, I have done more writing than at any time since last winter or for that matter several years. I am surprised that I am as facile with my words as I am. Like Burroughs, as I sit down to a finished article, I wonder that there were as many thoughts and I wonder where they all came from. Last night and yesterday, I worked about four hours, this morning two making six in all. What gets me is the fact that I can think at my machine and one advantage there is that one's thoughts are clear and correction easy.

Am I going to run out of material. I do not think so but how will I know unless I really do any work. I think there will be plenty of material, more than I can ever conceive of once I get going. Periods of sterility will come, but they will be conquered. Do not worry about [that] at any rate. Do not either worry about quotations. Your own thoughts are worth more than theirs. Have confidence in yourself and do not let what others have said worry you. If you really worked this winter, by spring you should have a dozen things ready for publication. The only way in which I can develop a medium is to keep on writing steadily, writing and thinking, always thinking. What I am most thrilled about is the fact that I am getting back into the swing. I feel thoughts coming and capture them and doing it, means the end of the old inertia and stagnation. Now if I can only keep on and above all sell something I will begin to get back my self respect.

I have the terrible urge for self expression. I can't do anything without having it ride me. If I go anywhere, I fret away the time, because I have no opportunity to write. If I go out iwth other people, I will sit in a corner and read, letting them play cards. I act like a neurotic and the waste of time is terrible to me. Perhaps it is a form of neurasthenia that I have worked myself into. Whatever it is, days and nights in which I am not writing are nightmares. If I could spend the best time of the day working at what I think I should do, then I could feel free to play the rest of the time and play wtih abandon. This way, I feel my evenings are wasted unless I try and do what I want and what a miserable failure most of them have been due to the fact that I am on edge and over nervous.

I realize now that the most important thing in life to me is finding out once and for all whether or not I should go on this way. Once that is settled then there is little else to worry about. But that alone is all important, so important that my peace of mind depends on it. Knowing that then, no sacrifice is too great to make in the solving of it. If a solution can be reached this winter, what a milestone in my progress. Think of being able to write in your diary, "I have found it" and to know that for the rest of my life there will be no more wondering or debating as to what it is to be. Then I will adopt a regular writing program and adhere to it and that solely.

Think of recognition of the public, magazines, fan mail, tributes to my insight and genious. Sounds egotistic but even that is a small part of it. The big thing will be the happiness of knowing that at last I am on the right track and no longer a drifter. It is not an impossible thing if I have courage enough and strength enough to go through with it. I labor under no illusions as to the work it will entail, the sewat and misery of waiting for the mail, rejections and all of that. I know already what that means, but there will be plenty of other compensations to take care of my peace of mind.