The Golden Notebook–Doris Lessing

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Book Reviews!.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

I came across this novel as a teenager, struggling to write. You see, I had this intense desire to write, felt that I had something to communicate, but did not yet have the skills to meet my imagination on the page in a way that worked consistently. So, I sat in cafes and poured over the writers I admired, hoping to inherit their style by diligently underlining phrases—whole sentences—and in general, swooning over their prose. One of these books, read clutching my own spiral notebook and pen in various coffee shops around town was The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.
“This novel, then, is an attempt to break a form; to break certain forms of consciousness and go beyond them. While writing it, I found I did not believe some of the things I thought I believed: or rather, that I hold in my mind at the same time beliefs and ideas that are apparently contradictory. Why not? We are, after all, living in the middle of a whirlwind.” This description, taken from the jacket cover of one edition of the book, only begins to touch on why I have such a powerful connection to this book.
Unflinching questions about what it means to be human, a woman, and a writer are posed in Lessing’s novel. Anna, the main character writes about different parts of her life in four distinct notebooks and tries to bring them all together in a fifth “golden notebook”. This process drives her to insanity and back. I read this book on the edge of my seat, amazed at the complexity and depth of the characters and the refreshing honesty in Lessing’s treatment of them. The seamless shifts and turns between the notebooks, between action and narration left me mouth agape in awe. I longed to write like that. This book changed my life. It sealed my fate as a writer, pushed me to question my role as a woman in society and in my family, and unraveled for me the nature and necessity of freedom.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.