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Meg Waite Clayton

Author of the international bestsellers The Postmistress of Paris, The Last Train to London, and 6 other novels

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September 6, 2009 By Meg Waite Clayton

Natural Writers

I’m reading Graham Swift’s Making an Elephant: Writing from Within (if you’ve never read Swift, go get a copy of Last Orders this minute and do so!) and came across the following passage, which gave me great comfort:
“It was one thing — not a difficult thing — to want to be a writer; another to become one… Looking back on it, I think the truth was that I was scared of my ambition, scared of discovering that I didn’t have what it took to fulfil it.”
Hmmm … even Booker Prize winners can have doubt.
And this passage:
“I wonder now if the notion of the natural writer isn’t entirely mythical. The natural writers are just the ones who make it look natural — even Tolstoy idn’t work in an oracular trance. But when I was seventeen, turning eighteen, I certainly believed in natural writers. I thought they were the real writers. And this was perhaps the nub of my fear about my ambition: I knew I wasn’t a natural writer. If I were, I’d already be a writer; there’d be no question of becoming one. The only way I could be a writer would be by making myself one, by squeezing the writer out of me. By work.”
Inspires me to squeeze a little harder! – Meg

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Meg Waite Clayton


Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of eight novels, including the Good Morning America Buzz pick and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice THE POSTMISTRESS OF PARIS, the National Jewish Book Award finalist THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, 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. Her novels have been published in 23 languages. She has also written more than 100 pieces for major newspapers, magazines, and public radio, mentors in the OpEd Project, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar. megwaiteclayton.com

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