Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

By

Beatrix Potter on Writing First Lines – Sort Of

Meg at Beatrix Potter's TarnI’ve been rooting around in the life of Beatrix Potter, having so enjoyed visiting Hill Top Farm and assorted other Potter-rich locales in the English Lake District, from which Mac and I just returned. And I’m in the early stages of a new novel, so when I came across the following Potter quote, I simply had to share:
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know were they’ll take you.” — Beatrix Potter
So much more optimistic than that saying about the first words put on the page beginning to destroy the thing now, isn’t it?!
It turns out that the quote is not from Potter herself, but from the movie. But it’s still a nice quote!
The photo, by the way, is me at Beatrix Potter’s tarn, which if you don’t know (I didn’t!) means a mountain lake or pool. She and her husband used to row and fish there in the evening. Mac and I hiked up there from our little cottage, on our way over to see Hill Top Farm. – Meg

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Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, a Jewish Book Award finalist based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape. Her six prior novels include the Langum-Prize honored The Race for Paris and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly's 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. A graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school, she has also written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Runners World, and public radio, often on the subject of the particular challenges women face. megwaiteclayton.com