Godwin Gail - The making of a writer: journals, 1961-1963

Table of Contents

To JCO
begetter

PRAISE FOR The Making of a Writer

The author speaks directly and fearlessly in her own intimate, inimitable voice. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As a diarist myself I read Gail Godwins diary with complicity, pleasure, suspense, annoyance, competitiveness, astonishment, and, yes, a touch of jealousy. She holds her own gorgeously. Its writing about writing, from the inside out: what it meansand takesto be a writer. NED ROREM

Thanks to... the freshness of [Godwins] emerging writers voice, the emotional and intellectual complexities of her adventures, and the blaze of her literary ambition, this is an exceptionally well-made and enjoyable volume.... Strong, shrewd, funny, and literary to the core, young Godwin is good company, and her lively journal reveals much about the making of a writer. Booklist (starred)

[Godwin shows] the ways in which a writers imagination began to shape the material of her life into what later became notable short stories and novels; its remarkable, in fact, that someone who at twenty-four could write with such wit, perception and rueful self-knowledge would have to wait another half-dozen years before receiving any recognition for her gifts. In one despairing moment, Godwin writes, This journal has no earthly use or interest to anyone but Number One. Profoundly untrue. Publishers Weekly (starred)

[The journals] make for great voyeuristic reading, especially since in addition to a strong belief in her literary calling, [Godwin]... had a passion for travel, strong drink, funand men, men, men.... The Making of a Writer is good reading for armchair travelers, frustrated writers and Godwins many fans. San Antonio Express-News

Many readers and critics refer to Godwin as a female Philip Roth because, like Roth, she has unabashedly written about her life.Los Angeles Times

[Godwin] records her relationships and observations throughout with humor and humility, which results in a vivid portrait of Godwins daily life and her relentless pursuit of a career as a writer. Library Journal

PREFACE

The impetus for this project came as a suggestion in a 2001 letter from a friend and fellow writer, Joyce Carol Oates. Maybe someday you could edit your journal, she wrote to me, and present it to the world in the way that Leonard Woolf shaped the wonderful book titled A Writers Diary, an extreme distillation of Virginias immense journal.

I reread Virginia Woolfs A Writers Diary, which Ive owned, in one edition after another, ever since college days. Its immediacy and charm were still fresh for me. Like any apprentice writer, I have beenand continue to beavid for information about how others became writers, what they tried, what worked, what didnt, what they read, what music they listened to, the people and scenes that served as raw material for later works.

That same year, someone sent me a copy of a new book, Alexandra Johnsons Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal; The Art of Transforming a Life into Stories (Little, Brown, 2001). To my surprise and pleasure, I found that the author began her first chapter with an excerpt from my essay A Diarist on Diaries (Antaeus, Autumn 1988). Quotes from this essay were sprinkled generously throughout the book, and another excerpt was used at the beginning of the final chapter.

Soon after this, I found a Woodstock poet and college teacher of Italian, Jane Toby, who agreed to transcribe the journals. I would go through each handwritten journal and mark in blue ink the passages to be typed. I also abbreviated names or used initials when appropriate. There was no rush; she could do it at her leisure. When Jane and I embarked on this project, I had no immediate plans for publication. But it seemed a sensible idea to have the selections stored away on disks.

The decision to prepare the journals of my apprentice years as a writer (19611970) for publication came when Rob Neufeld agreed to work with me to shape these selections into something useful in the field of writers journals. A professional librarian and a book reviewer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, Rob has been reviewing, appreciating, and explicating my work since the mid-1980s. During our conversations for the interviews and questions for the Ballantine Readers Circle editions of Evenings at Five and The Finishing School, I realized he was the ideal collaborator for this project, if he would take it on. I sent him some selections from the earlier journals and he e-mailed back:

I know with what kind of hunger certain people go to writers accounts of their development. From your first selection, I can see that you offer a number of thingsfirst, an opportunity to identify with an emerging writer... and then there are the life choices, also critical and dramatic (Must take a gamble in less than twenty days). Theres somuch morecommentary on other authors; examples of ways tosketch character portraits; good writing clues; witticisms; concernsabout fleeting time, self-traps, and the writing market; insights intothemes and motifs in your work; and connections to projects that mightbear fruit in various forms in future works.

This, the first volume of The Making of a Writer, contains entries from eleven notebooks dating from August 10, 1961, in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, to July 19, 1963, in London.

Gail Godwin

Part one

THE PREPARATION

Blowing Rock and Asheville, North Carolina;
Washington, D.C.; and New York

AUGUST 12OCTOBER 4, 1961

On August 8, 1961, with a firm plan very much in mind, a restless twenty-four-year-old Gail Godwin had settled in her dormitory at MayviewManor, a once-elegant resort in the mountains of western North Carolina.She had taken a job as a waitress at the resort to earn money for the European trip that would inaugurate her creative writing career.

My room was on the top floor, Gail now recalls, and my bed lookedout into the trees. The night was clear and spicy with wood smells. It wasafter the dinner shift and I had bathed and was drinking Hennessey eight-year-old cognac.

She took out her eight-by-five-inch Record Bookwhich she hassaid was her savings account and safety deposit boxand wrote in aheartfelt way about her father getting drunk in his little brick house and falling asleep on the sofa. Mose W. Godwin was divorced from Gails mother, Kathleen , and Gail had spent some time nourishing his sense of hope as he supported her in her first year of college.

The memory would eventually find its best expression in Gails story Old Love good Girls. Presently, she penned herself some literary encouragement: Stand by me oh noble holy inspiration. Let... me... do... it.

Gail knew she was standing at one of the great turning points in herlife. Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had lefther hungry for knowledge and opportunity, and the loss of her job as a reporter at the Miami Herald