No guest today. Just me, since it’s my publication week! And just in case this is your first visit to 1st Books … I’m Meg Waite Clayton, the New York Times-bestselling author of four novels. My newest, The Wednesday Daughters – a sequel of sorts to my writing-group novel, The Wednesday Sisters – just came out yesterday. It’s on the summer reading lists of The Chicago Tribune and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the San Jose Mercury News says of it, “Readers who loved Clayton’s 2008 best-seller, The Wednesday Sisters, have a great summer book waiting for them.” (Yes, it is awkward to introduce myself, which is I suppose why I haven’t done it before.) Love to connect with you in person if I get anywhere near you on my Wednesday Daughters book tour. (I’m happy to answer questions about writing and publishing at the events, most of which are free). And a big thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate with me at Books Inc. last night! – Meg
The history of my own writing starts with a brown paper lunch bag. My first writing teacher – at a college extension class – dumped its contents out over the table and told us to write for five minutes about anything that spilled out. She swore we wouldn’t have to read (just as the character of Linda does in my second novel, The Wednesday Sisters, when she’s pushing the sisters to write at the picnic table in the park). Then my teacher, Jennifer Allen, called on me to read first.
Which is the good news. If she hadn’t, I’d have ducked out before she could. It had taken all the nerve I had just to get to that class, to admit that, yes, I dreamed of writing novels.
To make a long story short from that point, I’m just going to say it: Ten Years. That’s how long it took me from dumped bag to first novel on bookstore shelves. The thing that kept me going: writing friends. 
Like the Wednesday Sisters in that second novel, none of my early writing friends was published when we started out, but we now count – as of the publication of The Wednesday Daughters yesterday – eight books between the four of us, and a ninth under contract. We’re a stubborn bunch—which, if you’ve read any of the guest posts I’ve been honored to host on 1st Books—seems to be what it takes.
It took me another five years (and a new agent) to get a second novel published after my first, The Language of Light, sold “modestly.” In the interim, I learned the hard way that while just being published is lovely, book sales are important, too. I’ve come to see that booksellers are the front line in helping new voices find audiences, and I do my best to support the booksellers who support writers. Selling books is as much a labor of love as writing them is.
And so is publishing. I know the publishing world can seem impersonal. Believe me, I know what a form rejection looks like. But I also know that most people in publishing stay there because they love books, and work really, really hard. I feel incredibly lucky to have a wonderful team helping me negotiate the turbulent waves of these changing publishing days.
Which leaves me with readers.
C.S. Lewis once said, “We read to know that we are not alone.” It’s a funny thing to think that a solo activity connects us in ways that little else does. But I know reading has made me feel understood, and helped me understand myself in ways that nothing else does. I hope that my writing will make you feel understood, too. And I appreciate all the precious time you commit to reading. Without readers, there would be no books. – Meg
