Seeds of destruction

I found inspiration while reading the journal of renowned author Gail Godwin for Narrative Magazine. Titled The Making of a Writer, the site published diary excerpts from August 1963 to December 1968.

I haven't read her any of her novels yet but reading her journal make me want to. For one, I like the intellectual yet flirty way she constructs her sentences. Even Hal Scharlatt of Random House "waxes over how beautifully I write—a born storyteller; intelligent feeling" in her November 29 entry.

They say that if one wants to become a good writer, to develop your own style, one has to read numerous works and then choose which to emulate. Finding the writer voice becomes easier then. Gail Godwin, I want to have a voice like yours. Or at least be inspired by it, the way I currently am.

Here is the entry I love and can relate to:

April 29
I have the seeds of destruction in me. Ambrose had them. I am attracted to people who have them. The pleasant lugubriousness of sitting in a pub with a fellow failure and discussing how much your failures have in common. As much as it hurts, the truth is this: succeeding is evident only from what has been done—not from what is shown, thought, sensed, or dreamed, but done.

Like all writers, Godwin also had these little contemplations about being a writer. Here's a good entry:

March 22
I hope I can remember how one gradually becomes a writer. Gradually the blur that has eluded you comes into focus. All those wishful afternoons when you sat on the grass looking at Tom Wolfe’s mountains, wanting to write like he did, right off the bat. You had ideas. The story of Paul, slightly fictionalized; the story of your affair with A. Oh, you would change names, but you had not yet learned to concede reality to art. So your faithful mimickings of reality seemed more unreal than ever when you set them down on paper. And another thing you noticed: There were parts of stories that bored you to write them. (“I’ll just make myself finish this description.”) It didn’t occur to you that if it bored you, how much more would it bore the uninvolved reader?

What are the most valuable lessons so far?

1. There is a secret to successful emotional scenes. Chekhov simply reports what he sees, hears, and lets the reader supply the emotion.

2. You must try and cut out those details that may mean a lot to you personally but only tend to separate the reader from you.

For now: concentrate on taking a small subject (a relationship, an incident) and expanding it until you feel you’ve captured it right down to its tiniest detail, that you’ve seen into it as completely as possible.

To read more of her journal entries, click here. But you have to be a member of Narrative Magazine to read the full article.