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The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963

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Bestselling author Gail Godwin, a three-time National Book Award nominee, keeps a journal that her friend Joyce Carol Oates suggested she edit and share with readers. In this first installment, we eavesdrop on Godwin's life as she emerges as a writer during her travels to Europe as a young woman.

The journals open as Godwin is waitressing at a resort in North Carolina, saving money for her grand excursion. She is soon on a ship headed to Denmark --- and adventure. Humorous character sketches of her fellow passengers draw the reader in as we follow her to her destination.

Godwin struggles with self-doubt as a writer and her relationship with the man she loves in Denmark, as well as her perennial lack of money. She considers going home, but when she's offered a job in London, she takes it. First, though, she visits the Canary Islands for a blissful month. Afterward, she is torn between staying with a local love and going on to London. When she finally decides, her leave-taking is wrenching.

In London, her roller-coaster writer's life continues with the highs of doing good work and completing projects in which she takes pride. The lows are rejections and periods of writing inertia. She similarly experiences a roller-coaster relationship with 38-year-old never-married, "probably hopeless" James. She connects with other men and travels back to North Carolina to meet up with an old lover.

Back in London, Godwin struggles with co-workers, office politics, changing apartments, and writing or not writing. She yearns for a true relationship with a man, all the while despising herself for caring so much. At the same time, she celebrates her freedom.

Godwin constantly thinks about her writing. Even as she battles self-doubt she concocts rules to write by, such as: Don't be false. Trust in the story. Eliminate the dull parts. Forget second-best plots. Don't anticipate the reader's reaction. Start somewhere, anywhere. Let the ending be found in the beginning.

The reader of THE MAKING OF A WRITER is privileged to watch as Godwin composes a story, talking herself through each part and using her life experiences --- a fascinating process. She also includes advice on keeping a journal and the reflection that her journal entries seed writing that may come decades later. The book is also liberally peppered with footnotes; at the outset I found these distracting but soon came to relish them.

I've been a Gail Godwin fan for decades. After reading her journal, I feel that I now know her as a struggling author and as a person of moods and vulnerabilities. I constantly looked forward to my time reading it and discovering more about the author. It is particularly fascinating to read Godwin's latest novel, QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD, which was partially based on the author's experience as a young reporter in Miami, in order to discover echoes between the two books: a suicide, waitressing jobs, significant names, and more. An excellent read; highly recommended.


--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

I first read Gail Godwin's work in the mid-seventies, when in the midst of the women's movement, I was trying to find my way through the dilemma of being an independent woman who loved men. Godwin had been there before me, and I was attracted to her early novels--The Perfectionist, The Odd Woman and Violet Clay.

Now, reading her journal, I see that she was addressing of this dilemma nine years before she published her first novel in 1970. She's been one step ahead of me ever since. At first, this journal seems to be rather typically about a woman with a wealth of male lovers and friends who can't decide who's Mr. Right. Remember, this is pre-Second Wave feminism, on the early edge of the Sexual Revolution. She's so circumspect about her sexuality that you must read carefully to figure out who she's sleeping with, and who she's not. Although Britain must have been more open that North Carolina where she grew up, Gail scandalizes the people who run the boarding house where she lives by staying out all night. She struggles with developing her own moral compass just as diligently as she struggles with her affection for a variety of men.

She also forms one of her rare female friendships with an American woman of color, something that was uncommon for Southern white women as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum.

Meanwhile, she flogs herself about her writing and re-writing of various fictions, none of which makes it to publication during the course of this journal. She takes her vocation as a writer seriously, above anything else. Amazingly, she's only twenty-four when this journal begins, but she's already married and discarded one husband and one career as a journalist.

Beyond her determination to be a writer, two things intrigued me about these musings: the attraction she must have held for men and the absence of mention of her parents. I found explanations for both that satisfied me before I finished. The poet Sylvia Plath was about the same age as Godwin and lived in London at the same time. There is no indication that they encountered each other, but it's interesting to compare how the two women addressed very similar personal and vocational issues.

Now I want to return to the novels and see if they have the same power I felt when I first read them. Godwin was brave to publish this journal, because by spilling her guts on some very raw material, she reveals how her persistence led to a rich literary career.

On the face of it, this book seems to be pitched to aspiring writers, but I think that it holds greater value as a reflection of the early 1960's, and as a testimony to the human spirit.

In "The Making of a Writer" Gail Godwin describes her life in terms that echo the words of a heroine in her fictional work, "The Odd Woman". In that book, the character of Jane says, "Sometimes I think those persons raised in the interstices of Zeitgeists are the ones most punished."

At the beginning of the 1960's, America was not a country given over to self-examination. A resurgence of feminism was nothing more than a vague rumor that may have swirled in the air. Women in the early 60's were not well positioned for success. This was a generation in peril of falling through the cracks. The truest echo of this time may be Sylvia Plath's classic, "The Bell Jar".

For Gail Godwin, the 60's began with an abortive attempt at marraige and a short stint as a journalist with the Miami Herald which also ended disastrously. Focusing her indomitable will on her desire to become a writer, Godwin embarked on a personal odyssey, traveling to Denmark, Spain, and the Canary Islands before taking a job with the Travel Service and extended residence in London.

In her journals she depicts both the struggle to become a published fiction writer, and a deeper quest to understand herself and other human beings. As she records impressions of her life and the characters who populate it, she also strives to find the modern writers that most speak to her sensibilities and to discover the essences she most wants to inform her own stories.

As a "twenty- something'', Godwin is possessed of a very acute intelligence--but the reader will also find hints of youthful callowness. To her credit, Godwin has not expurgated her journals. Their scrupulous honesty is part of their appeal.

As the book progresses, Godwin seems to shift her aims away from overly idealized characterizations and toward a new concern with "displaced persons". As this volume ends, she is beginning to investigate Carl Jung's psychological theories, something which seems to bode well for a young writer who views much of the world in black and white.

One thing that I didn't find endearing about this book was its use of an "explicator", in the form of editor Rob Neufeld. His italicized introductions and interjections often seem to be leading the reader like a rather stuffy tour guide through the Musee d' Godwin. I didn't really appreciate his presence, and I wish Godwin had done the honors (of "explication") herself.

Not every reader who comes to this book is going to buy into the idea, as Neufeld does, that Godwin is a writer of greatness deserving to join Faulkner, Steinbeck, or even Salinger in the firmament. The excerpts from the fiction Godwin was writing at the time of these memoirs reveal only a talented beginner---one who seems intimidated by the contemporary Beat writers ( her story about a Village girl seems lifeless ) and unsure about how to fully animate fiction drawing on her own backround.

It could be that in the future, nonetheless, these diaries (of which this volume is the first) may be regarded as Godwin's best work. I am not ready to compare her to Anais Nin or Lou Salome, but these journals do reveal an estimable intelligence possessed of great determination. In finally stepping out from behind the veil of fiction, it is here that Godwin may make her lasting mark.

Gail Godwin's latest book is as much about the struggle of a female in her mid-twenties to find her life's work, as it is about writing. As her story unfolds over a two-year period, the reader can sense the author's growth, both as a person and as a writer. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to be a writer.