The Making of a Writer

by Gail Godwin

  Tomorrow is Thursday. Friday, Jas. & I escape. I need a skirt & blouse, raincoat & slacks & a sweater—& a writing pad. Tomorrow I must apply myself. Can’t get fired, it wouldn’t be good policy. Got one of B.’s cold love letters. He’s the only person I know who can write an affectionate letter with ice dripping from every line.

  This pen does not work well. I shall take it back. The funny thing is that it works at certain angles—when I write counterclockwise. Stay with me.186 It has taken me ten years to even begin saying things on paper.

  Happy Fourth. The dinner was a success. Mrs. West took her shoes off and ran home barefooted. I feel truly free & somehow know that I am leading the kind of life I am meant to be leading.

  JULY 9

  It came back in the worst way possible—with a printed note signed “the editors.”187

  Somehow, I know I’ll keep on trying and there won’t be an end to it. The worst thing that can happen is that I will persist and lose. The chances are that I’ll persist and win. James is coming by tonight to bring the accumulated clothes & souvenirs from the wonderful weekend. At least if everything else goes wrong, I will remember that there was somebody who enjoyed three days in Bath as much as I did. I think of us standing down in that pasture in our dinner clothes, waiting for our table to be ready. I have James as much as anybody has anybody. And he has me. Now is not the time for games. We are both standing on the border of uncertain, unpleasant times. I shall have to console him when his stories come back. Somehow I can’t bear to think of how they’ll hurt him, too.

  I will not know just how short of the mark I came on this rejection. Was it too long? Too autobiographical? Was the subject matter not right? Was the writing faulty? All I know to do is to finish this novel and then find a patient agent who will at least tell me what I lack.

  I do not feel like a failure. I will keep writing, harder than ever. I will stop hoping. I have stopped hoping, I think. One day, if I push on hard enough, I’ll get there and it will be worth all the hell. Or will it? What a funny thing if it doesn’t matter at all. Other people had to go through hell. Why should I be exempt?

  JULY 11

  I will spend fifty years, if I live that long, will prune, cut, rewrite & be my own worst critic. I am redoing “Roxanne” & cutting all the crap. I am (1) too wordy, (2) too obvious. When I finish rewriting this (over the weekend) I shall start mailing it again & while it is out I will have enough Dutch courage to finish the novel. Then that will be subjected to the same ruthless treatment. I am not afraid anymore, because I know what I can do. My trouble has been trying to do too much with words. For a while I shall simply set down what I see. Nothing more. I shall try to quit trying to trim off life’s edges, like a piecrust. This is simply the story of Roxanne. A girl with a problem. Let the reader decide what that problem is.

  JULY 17

  At 6: 15 p.m. tonight in the alley between South Hadley & Park Lane, I came within two yards of James. I was in a taxi & he didn’t see me. He was wearing the suit with red in it, he was turning a corner and he was trying very hard to stifle a yawn. In that instant, I was stunned with my own feeling for him & rode the rest of the way home feeling keen pleasure. A rare moment. The kind we all wish to have. The pleasure of spying invisibly upon a loved one.

  JULY 22

  It is almost Monday again. The entire weekend spent skiing. The Princess & her husband were at the Lake.188 James & I have reached the doldrums. If we can survive them we can survive anything. I have no illusions left about him but I love him. If all goes well our gang moves into Old Church Street next Tuesday—then there will be a double bed, food & I can write.

  JULY 23

  Wrote a poem entitled ODE TO SELFISHNESS.

  Happy, Happy Ennui

  Sailing down the River Me

  Please pour me a glass of wine

  Please be clever and divine

  Tell me you are only mine.

  Yes. Now Everything is fine.

  When we reach the other banks

  You shall get your word of thanks.

  Thanks.

  Splash.

  —Wentworth Talon189

  JULY 26

  Occasionally, I find out some distressing things about me. Running into Lydia Fish after three years, as soon as I had milked her of all Chapel Hill gossip I began wondering, “Now, how is she going to inconvenience me?” I don’t seem to want to take responsibility for anyone.

  JULY 27

  Monie’s birthday! I mustn’t forget. I have finished my novel. Ended it with Bentley saying B.’s words “AND SO RISES THE INDESTRUCTIBLE PYRAMID.” Now comes the task. I think I will type three carbons of the last chapter & of the psychiatrist chapter—send it to three agents. This one is good. I know it.

  JULY 30

  Eugenio is leaving as of this minute, trim and polite as ever. He was my favorite person in this house and I will miss him. While at Wests’ tonight I saw the date Jas. & I met—April 6. I have known him not quite four months. Wednesday I move to 21 Old Church Street.

  AUGUST 1

  Moving day—waiting for George to come & help me move. I have decided several things:

  to rewrite my novel, not skimping anywhere and always keeping the ring of authenticity, always the right word. I’ll have it done by September 1—in this new house.

  to stay away from James for a while. We are both fed up with each other. There is no point in seeing him (or, for that matter, of him seeing me) if it is mutually unpleasant.

  I will write him from Amsterdam and tell him simply that I will be away for a month. Or I will work out a similar compromise.

  This novel is good, but it needs work.

  —7: 50 same day. When I look back on London, if I ever leave, I will remember this evening. I must get some books on English history and learn the area so I can write about it. It is the color of the sky and the people coming into and going out of pubs. Tonight, after dinner, I am going through all my old notebooks. Amsterdam Friday evening. Money tomorrow. Calculate budget. I am so comfortable in here I can’t decide what to do first. I feel bad about the way things turned out for James & myself, but I’d rather be away from him & remember how nice he can be, than be with him and think how hateful he can be. August 1. August 1. Last year at this time I didn’t ever imagine this.

  I went for a walk. Down by the river. Into the Black Lion190 with the Wests.

  AUGUST 2

  Amsterdam tomorrow. Bought a pair of comfortable walking shoes for £1.19 & an orange skirt for Holland, £2.19. Washed my hair after Mrs. West’s delicious salmon trout dinner. Broke down & wrote James a note at his office because I’d left my bathing suit in the trunk of his car. Met him coming down King’s Road & had a drink with him. Those blue eyes coming toward you in the white light of 6: 30 p.m. on a summer night! He was going on to a party and was tired and didn’t want to go. He’d bought me a gift, a book called Style, by F. L. Lucas, 191 which I will read later. He kissed me on the cheek outside by his car and said, “Have a nice holiday, sweetie, and if you get into any trouble, give me an SOS.” I feel awful about my extremes of temper—if I can learn to live with any man, it’s James, and who am I to expect perfection? He is perfection most of the time and that’s why I get stunned when he so much as snaps at me. I’m taking my novel to work tomorrow. This ennui is terrible.

  AUGUST 7

  Amsterdam had no tulips but it had Van Goghs (173 of them) and a blond peach-cheeked canal-boat guide named Joost who said, “I’ll make you an evening in Amsterdam that you’ll never forget.” I filled several pages with on-the-spot impressions in my travel notebook, 192 so no use to repeat myself.

  It was a weekend in parentheses—complete in itself. Walking over the bridges in the rain, always the smooth green canals below. He is saying now: “To the right you see the Twin Sisters . . .”193

  Staying out until dawn on a continual party—it just occurred to me that this is the first time I ever did this. We went first to the Farmyard and had
two beers. It was in the second place, where the bartender told riddles and three men played instruments, that he first showed preference. Then we went to the Students’ Beer Parlor & I played Ella Fitzgerald’s “You’re Driving Me Crazy”—from there to a nicer bar, full of intellectuals, laughs, good jokes (sickness or disease), and a Dutchman with loads of teeth who kept saying, “American women smash their men . . .” Then to the Lucky Star, where we began dancing; then to a duller, mellower place for a rest; then to a very high-priced nightclub with an orchestra where we bought a bottle of wine & did the twist— then to the Café du Paris. When we came out, it was growing light.

  AUGUST 8

  Style by F. L. Lucas was another of the reasons I love James. One must first master all the rules in order to break them effectively.

  AUGUST 13

  Sometimes if I didn’t have this notebook to resort to, I would go crazy. A dozen little hells since yesterday. When will I learn? On top of everything, I am tired. Where to begin? James did come by yesterday. Said he was “slightly alarmed” at my disappearance. We went to the lake & I skied twice. Everyone was in a fine mood. I was almost orientally relaxed. Driving back we heard Berlioz’s Fantastique, which put a seal on the very pleasant outing. The evening. That’s where it started. We ate at home (an omelet) and drank Macon (again). It all started when we began talking about his job. The more we talked, the more hopeless it seemed for him. If the television thing fails, what does he really have left? If the story from the New Yorker comes back (it’s been gone five weeks), he will be very depressed. He mentioned several things he’d thought about doing (asking the man down at Pinewood Studios if there was anything in the production end; telling Davis the company simply was not using his talents). But then, in the course of the conversation, he ended up deciding not to do these things. I finally started crying and said far too much, including the fact that I loved him about fifty thousand times. I said I sometimes didn’t think it would make much difference to him if I was simply erased tomorrow. He said it would make a big difference. I then got worse & worse and he said he felt inadequate and didn’t take care of me and not to expect too much, and that I was harboring an image. He was so right but I didn’t want to hear it. He brought me home at eleven and I had private hysterics in the bedroom. He will never know. He said, among other things, that he didn’t have a great desire to be loved as Wm. did. I said, “Well, I love you, you’ll have to accept that.” I forget what he answered.

  AUGUST 16

  Planning the trip to Leeds, Bradford & Sheffield.194 Doreen is no help. Disorganized & can’t really get to the core of things. Heard Miller tell her that her report was “too general.” I talk to him tomorrow morning. Mine is all planned. I am also learning how to stand up to her in her own language. “Haven’t we?” “Don’t we?” etc. He used a lot of my suggestions.

  The Japanese film with James. I fell asleep twice. “Don’t you pretend that you haven’t been asleep,” he said when I woke up and said, “Isn’t that funny?” I was seeing two of everything. Afterwards we went to his apartment & talked & then I went to bed after a hot bath. He was very good to me in the way he sometimes is, being very protective. I could tell he was glad to have me around.

  While we were standing in the kitchen next morning, his rejected story came through the slot.

  What is to become of us both?

  I wish we could get away together.

  Andrew & I went to see The Premise.195 I laughed so hard the man behind me told me to keep still. Pleasant bus ride home. London at night makes me happy. The lighted double-decker buses, the Times Square– like splash of lights & advertisements in Piccadilly. I want to know this town well. Today I stumbled into Shepherd Market by accident. Must get a good guidebook about London. Maybe I will set my next book there. Keep your eyes open. Put down what you see in the simplest way.

  AUGUST 19

  Sounds on Old Church Street on a Sunday afternoon: footsteps on the carpeted stairs; a bus rolling down King’s Road; voices outside the Black Lion; someone singing; a bird chirping; a lorry bumping up this narrow street; Bob Hope in the living room below; a taxi—the unmistakable rattle of a London taxi.

  AUGUST 24

  The hunter is home from the hill.196 Triumphant. If only I were in the mood to write my report for Mr. Miller. But I’m not. Before Monday, however, I must get the orders all ready to be sent out with library copy requests on a separate list for me to fill. Called James when I got into St. Pancras station. He was going to a party but sounded genuinely glad to see me. He had surprised me by telephoning to Bradford. I wrote him two letters, one from Leeds, one from Sheffield. Tomorrow we go to the lake.

  It is time to start another story. Not a novel, I don’t think. But then what? Maybe I need this “think” period.

  This week has convinced me of one thing: I do things awfully fast.

  AUGUST 27

  One thing I know.

  Exhaustion. Twenty visitors, tension with Doreen, Betty Hughes and Pat gone away. I have completed my report on the trip & on the Canberra interviews.197 Tomorrow will be spent typing labels, filling orders, plus my regular job.

  Miller was impressed. Heard him tell Bob Briggs, “Gail had a fabulous trip.” Doreen came in almost two hours late. Re my U.S.A. trip: Miller reiterated, “Just be sure & come back.”

  SEPTEMBER 7

  If I could capture the feeling I had when reading last year’s entry for September 7, I would be another Wolfe, another Proust.198 I can lie here in my bed in Chelsea and still be lying above the treetops in Blowing Rock—like last September 7. Just for the record, my novel is with Eric Glass.199

  The reason I am not myself and very upset is because I am afraid if a mere agent rejects my book then what chance do I have? I know I will keep on trying but still it hurts. I haven’t the slightest idea whether or not it is good.

  SEPTEMBER 10

  Mrs. West gave me Proust and I am embarking on a new world.

  James

  hairdresser tomorrow

  Stella comes Wednesday200

  Eric Glass

  Proust

  SEPTEMBER 11

  Proust fascinates me. Of course, here is where my darling Durrell got his training. I have found rather he has expressed for me the thing I want to get across in “Kim.”201

  None of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone and need only be turned like a page in an account book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people . . .202

  And:

  So that even now I have the feeling of leaving someone I know for another quite different person when , going back in memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later . . . to this earlier Swann .

  Saw Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, 203 only now called The Loudest Whisper. Excellent. Must get my ducks in a row to go home. All clothes ready. Buy a sweater for under the suit—Jaeger tomorrow.

  I am thinking so much; but always too tired to write it down.

  When I woke this morning the first thing I thought about was James and I walking down Old Church Street to the river; only now the skies were gray and the streets were clear in daylight. Yet which is realer? The actual minute-to-minute we stood there or the hundred times I turn it over in my mind, examining it for new meanings?

  Don’t let Proust run away with you.

  His style is not your style.204

  “We’re friends, but I hate her. I hate her and she fascinates me at the same time. What has she got that makes everybody do what she wants?” The narrator’s mother replies, “You are smarter than Lisa Gudger . . . But Lisa likes herself better than you like yourself.” The daughter tries to believe her mother’s counsel that once she figures the dominating girl out, she will lose her fascination.

  SEPTEMBER 13

  Last night James and I met Stella at the airport. Funny crosscurrents— Chapel Hill & London. All cementing my individuality—so much to think abou
t—must get something done.

  Scene to be utilized at some time or another:

  I am lying in bed in this room that I have always imagined in stories, only it is real now, my blue room.205 Michel comes in and stands in the doorway. He is wearing a white high-collared shirt and braces and the pants to his gray suit. Eighteenth-century music is playing. He is talking about his stocks. He props one knee on my bed. For a minute I am the heroine of a romantic novel. He is my romantic husband. It is after a party. But the fantasy cannot last because I know that behind the wavy hair, the Byronic face, is a disorganized vagueness, Catholic provincialism, no room for growth.

  Viridiana206 with Stella. Mr. West expounding afterwards.

  SEPTEMBER 15

  SATURDAY

  How to begin? One has to start somewhere in summing up a philosophy one has fashioned while walking along the Embankment acutely conscious of oneself, making literature out of every smell of river; the Chelsea pensioner watching the rugby game; the leaves starting to fall, which remind one of other leaves in other places. The thing is to be patient. Without patience I will go crazy. I want to write and I know vaguely, in snatches, what I want to say. Saying it is something else. See. In this page I have skimped through the afternoon. I didn’t put the meaning or even the feeling in the words. Meaning? Feeling? Hell. James is suffering alone at some expensive hotel away from London. His “George” was returned with a printed slip from the BBC. We can at present be of no help to each other. When I think of how we would have spent the day—the lake, too much wine, too much food, each brooding over separate losses—I am fully aware that we had no business being together. But each time I think James, I am conscious of a vestigial sadness. Like waking and thinking for a minute the dream was real. We would have walked, talked, been bored and uninspired. And, I admit, it is healthy for me to be alone. I think I will soon consciously accept the maxim of complete self-sufficiency (as much as is possible in my kind of world), and when that acceptance comes, I will wake up and quit receding into the habits of the other maxim: the one of dependence. No one could understand that last sentence but me. The day when I can write sentences of this kind in a way that others can understand, I will be a writer.