The most memorable photographs, for which Virginia Woolf so hated posing, show the writer at rest—cerebral, contemplative, wistful, and—indoors. This person would not have been at home in the natural world, they seem to say; moreover, writing is a quiet pursuit, in which, perhaps, great thoughts are recollected in tranquility. In fact, in her personal writing, where Woolf frequently uses images of active, physical pursuits to describe the arduous act of writing, the opposite is true.

Sometimes, Woolf likens writing to steeple chasing: “I've taken my fences, as I say, & got some good gallops for my trouble” (D2: 258) or to mining for gold. Referring to what became The Waves, Woolf notes: “I may have found my mine this time, I think. I may get all my gold out…. And my vein of gold lies so deep, in such bent channels” (D2: 292). Of the same novel she later writes, “I've got to work with my pick at my seam,” excavating, or even drilling, when she feels she has “at last, bored down into my oil well, & can't scribble fast enough to bring it all to the surface” (D3: 12). The frequency with which Woolf shows that what she is attempting requires her to go below the surface is remarkable. Woolf should be pictured in helmets, hard hats, or goggles and wetsuits, the latter especially, for within her diaries, no images describing her writing recur more often or are more significant to her creative process than those associated with water, particularly swimming and diving.

Throughout her writing career, Virginia Woolf used her diaries as a bridge to her published works. She reread them often: “It composes,” she said. “Why? I think [it] shows one a stretch, when one's grubbing in an inch” (D5: 227). She writes that she hoped the diaries