AND YET: BE SENSIBLE. Be a writer for a minute, the cataloguer of loves. Remember how you loved the mortality in the spent face of Sandy, cherished the green circles under his eyes. Remember the agony of nostalgia when contemplating Claude's slim, small, taut body. Where are those feelings now?
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If there is any resolution, it is to dampen down the ego. Stop fantasizing gratifications. Stop talking about yourself, exaggerating, and feeling "hurt." Shyness is a form of selfishness.
-- From The Making of a Writer: Journals 1963-1969 by Gail Godwin
Gail Godwin has written thirteen novels, two story collections, and several nonfiction books. She is a three-time finalist for the National Book Award. She's also a writer of librettos, contributing to ten musical works. She earned a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina in 1959 and spent some time writing for the Miami Herald and the United States Travel Service. She later joined the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she studied with Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving, and wrote her first novel, The Perfectionists, as her dissertation. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in Woodstock, New York.
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