How he wrestled with himself! Sublime thoughts came to him (nearly all about that girl), and he drove them away, for he knew they beat only against the march of his story, and, whatever befall, the story must march.
Relentlessly he followed in the track of his men, pushing the dreary dogs on to deeds of valour.

He tried making the lady human, and then she would not march; she sat still, and he talked about her; he dumped her down, and soon he was yawning.

This weariness was what alarmed him most, for well he understood that there could be no treasure where the work was not engrossing play, and he doubted no more than Pym that for him the treasure was in the tale or nowhere.
Had he not been sharpening his tools in this belief for years?
Strange to reflect now that all the time he was hacking and sweating at that novel (the last he ever attempted) it was only marching towards the waste-paper basket! He had a fine capacity, as has been hinted, for self-deception, and in time, of course, he found a way of dodging the disquieting truth.
This, equally of course, was by yielding to his impulses.

He allowed himself an hour a day, when Pym was absent, in which he wrote the story as it seemed to want to write itself, and then he cut this piece out, which could be done quite easily, as it consisted only of moralizings.

Thus was his day brightened, and with this relaxation to look forward to be plodded on at his proper work, delving so hard that he could avoid asking himself why he was still delving.