noon
I had been writing four hours without stopping . My cheeks were flaming , my feet were cold , my lips parched . It was high time someone called me to lunch . The next morning , back at the desk , I looked over what I had written , conquered the usual sick qualms of discouragement at finding it so infinitely flat and insipid compared to what I had wished to make it , and with a very clear idea of what remained to be done , plodded ahead doggedly , and finished the first draught before noon . It was almost twice too long . After this came a period of steady desk work , every morning , of re-writing , compression , more compression , and the more or less mechanical work of technical revision , what a member of my family calls `` cutting out the ` whiches ' '' . The first thing to do each morning was to read a part of it over aloud , sentence by sentence , to try to catch clumsy , ungraceful phrases , overweights at one end or the other , `` ringing '' them as you ring a dubious coin , clipping off too-trailing relative clauses , `` listening '' hard .