The Pilot -- Southern Pines, NC -- October 9, 2004

Judy Goldman Says She Followed Her Dream
BY FAYE M. DASEN: Features Editor
 

Judy Goldman is living proof that aspiring writers should never give up trying.

"I started my first novel when I was 53," she says in an e-mail interview with The Pilot. "It was published just before my 58th birthday. I hope that my late start will encourage other ‘seniors’ who would like to write."

Goldman’s second novel is "Early Leaving," which she will discuss on Saturday, Oct. 16, at 3 p.m. at the Country Bookshop.

"I’ve always loved writing," says Goldman. "I wrote my first poem in the third grade - I still have the original copy, written in cursive, which I’d just learned. The title was ‘My Friend, Joe.’ It showed absolutely no promise!"

Goldman also began keeping a diary in 1949, filling up one each year until she started writing fiction in 1993.

"I ‘published’ a newspaper, which I distributed to the neighborhood, and I made greeting cards, with the trade name ‘Kurtz Kard Ko.’ on the back of each," she says. "I also wrote plays, which I coerced the neighborhood children to star in."

Writing became a serious business when Goldman was in her late 30s.

"Both of my parents were dying at the same time," she says. "I took to my typewriter when I could just as easily have taken to my bed. I wrote through my grief - poem after maudlin poem."

After Goldman’s second book of poetry was published, she felt she was ready for a new challenge - fiction.

"I read contemporary novels to teach myself how to be a better novelist," she says. "I have so much to learn and not a lot of time in which to learn it."

Recent reads include "Tortilla Curtain" by T.C. Boyle, "Being Dead" by Jim Crace and "Carry Me Across the Water" by Ethan Canin.

"The novel I read just as I was interested in trying fiction was "Monkeys" by Susan Minot," she says. "It’s not strong on plot, but rather anecdotal, which made me think, ‘hmm. Maybe I could do that.’"

Goldman’s background in poetry was sometimes a stumbling block as she worked on her novel.

"Poets-turned-novelists tend to pick," she says. "We look for the rightness of every single word; we study a word or sentence or paragraph a hundred or 200 times as though that huge gorilla of a novel we’re trying to wrestle down is only a two-stanza poem."

One of Goldman’s mentors has been novelist Pat Conroy.

"He read my first book and wrote a lovely quote, which appears on the back cover," she says. "He has sort of ‘adopted’ me and phones pretty often to reassure me when my confidence is flagging. Pat’s interest in me and my career is not unusual; there are dozens of writers whom he keeps up with and encourages on a regular basis."

Goldman was born and raised in Rock Hill, S.C.

"I have lived in Charlotte for 37 years, since I met my husband on a blind date, married him after only three dates and moved in with him after the wedding," she says.

The couple have two grown children and twin granddaughters with another grandchild due in February.

Goldman’s first novel, "The Slow Way Back," published in 2000, won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for Best First Work of Fiction and was a finalist for the Southeast Booksellers Association’s Best Novel of 2000.

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