The writer's diary as borderland: the public and private selves of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Louisa May Alcott

The Practice Ground for Fiction Dr Meg Jensen, Kingston University ‟It strikes me that in this book I practise writing; do my scales; yes and work at certain effects. I daresay I practised Jacob here; and Mrs D and shall invent my next book here; for here I write merely in the spirit - great fun it is too, and Old V of 1940 will see something in it too. ‟ From Virginia Woolf, The Writer's Diary, October 17 1924. What is the work of a writers' diary? A literary enterprise? Sketchbook? Self-Reflective Therapy? What contributions do the non-fiction forms of letters, journals, diaries or notebooks make to the fiction of the writers who compose them? As always in my reading I find myself in search of keys to understanding the creative process: How do writers write? In my paper I propose to follow up the clue Virginia Woolf gives us above, and to examine the life writing of a number of writers including Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Louisa May Alcott. By doing so, I hope to uncover some of their respective preoccupations, interests and obsessions, and then suggest ways in which we glimpse creativity in action as we see these same concerns being worked through and reimagined in the fiction of each.