The Making of a Writer Journals, 1961-1963

Gail Godwin was twenty-four years old when she wrote: "I want to be everybody who is great; I want to create everything that has ever been created." It is a declaration that only a wildly ambitious young writer would make in the privacy of her journal. Now, in "The Making of a Writer," Godwin has distilled her early journals, which run from 1961 to 1963, to their brilliant and charming essence. She conveys the feverish period following the breakup of her first marriage; the fateful decision to move to Europe and the shock of her first encounters with Danish customs (and Danish men); the pleasures of soaking in the human drama on long rambles through the London streets and the torment of lonely Sundays spent wrestling these impressions into prose; and the determination to create despite rejection and a growing stack of debts. "I do not feel like a failure," Godwin insists. "I will keep writing, harder than ever."

Brimming with urgency and wit, Godwin's inspiring tome opens a shining window into the life and craft of a great writer just coming into her own.

"A generous gift from a much-loved author to her readers."

-"Chicago Sun-Times"

"Full of lively, entertaining observations on the literary life . . . [captures] the spirit of a young writer's adventure into foreign lands and foreign realms of thought and creative endeavor."

-"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution"

"As cities and continents and men change, the entries are borne along by . . . the young Godwin's fierce conviction that she is meant to write fiction and her desire to distract herself from this mission with any man who catches her eye."

-"The New York Times Book Review"

"[Godwin] describes a high-wire act of love and work. . . . She espouses fierce, uncompromising ideas about fiction."

-"Los Angeles Times"

"[Gail Godwin's journals] are a gold mine."

-"The Boston Globe"