I love Virginia Woolf. She has inspired me, taught me, haunted me, held me to a higher standard all my reading and writing life. I also believe that language is music and that finding the music — or the cadence — or the rhythm — of each character’s voice is my way “in” to my characters. So imagine my delight when I found this quote recently.
“As for the mot juste, you are quite wrong. Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning; crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it …”
— Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Vita Sackville-West, 1926