"...I believe I may have a first sentence." So announces Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) to her husband before returning upstairs to her room, and so begins the work on what will become Mrs. Dalloway, one of the milestones of the modern novel.

The Hours, the movie where that scene comes from, depicts what a part of the act of writing is like. Woolf spends the morning alone in her room, cigarrette in one hand, pen in the other, working out the sentences of the novel she's bringing forth. But this wouldn't tell us anything about the work that really goes into writing weren't it for two key scenes where Woolf is away from her pen and her notebook and yet she keeps on writing.

The first one is during a walk she takes, leaving the house for a moment. She is engaged in her thoughts, barely conscious of the people on the streets or the bright day around her. And by thinking out loud, she lets us in on her thoughts: she's figuring out the direction her book is taking, and she realizes the character she's writing will die.

The second, similar moment occurs as Virginia's sister pays her a visit. Her sister talks about mutual acquaintances but Virginia isn't listening; she's once again writing, if not with her pen then with her mind, realizing that Mrs. Dalloway isn't the one that'll die in the book but that someone else will pass away from its pages.

Writing is a thought process, one that happens half at the blank page (or document) where the words fall and half in the stream of thought released by the act of writing. It's in the heaving back and forth between both where the first draft is born.