Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

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The Story Was Completely Untrue

“The story was completely untrue, but the untruth of untrue stories could sometimes be of service in the real world.” – Salman Rushdie, from The Enchantress of Florence

I came across this quote on Fiction Writers Review (which if you don’t know it, is a wonderful resource on the craft of writing). It reminded me of the Truman Capote quote (sometimes attributed to Stephen King, but The New Yorker, anyway, says it’s Capote):
“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

I’d not yet seen the Rushdie quote – sadly, my copy of Enchantress remains on my TBR shelf – but I love it because it is says so well why fiction matters, and why we should keep trying our best to deliver believable lies.
It also reminded me of an Authors@Google presentation by Rushdie that I’d watched when trying to sort out what I would say for my own Authors@Google gig. Needless to say, it was very intimidating! And I learned a lot from it, so am sharing it here. – 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