Meg Waite Clayton’s novel, The Wednesday Sisters invites you in to the lives of five suburban young moms in the late sixties. Frankie, Linda, Brett, Ally, and Kath, want more from their lives than family and playgrounds can provide, yet they don’t even know what they are yearning for when they first bond over the literature they love in Palo Alto’s Pardee Park every Wednesday.

Good writing looks easy and they decided to form a writing group after consuming several drinks as they watch the Miss America Pageant. Though they first define themselves by what their husbands do, we soon see them as an athlete, a debutante, a brain, a mystery woman, and a transplant, individuals in their own right who have fascinating stories to tell. As they face rejection, revision, and growth, we see how tough writing and rewriting can be.

Meg Waite Clayton, who is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, started writing when she was 32 and her husband said, “How are you ever going to know if you don’t give it a try?” Her first draft writing rule is “2000 words or 2:00,” and the day she got her inspiration for The Wednesday Sisters, she wrote in her journal, “Feeling incredibly well-run-dry today… I don’t have anything… Not a character yet, or even an idea of where it will go or how it will start.” Later that morning a woman in a Stanford cap walked by the patio where she was writing and planted the seed that would be come Linda.

In a Q & A, the author shared her experience and expertise:

Lynn
Tell us about how you got started as a writer. How did your law school experiences and short stories help you write The Wednesday Sisters?

Meg
I imagined becoming a writer from about the time I read A Wrinkle in Time, but to me, writing novels was like leaping tall buildings in single bounds.

I went to law school and didn’t start writing seriously for years. But the law is all about stories: how one small change in facts can make a big difference in outcome. I learned discipline in law school, too, and met some interesting folks, all of whom turn out to be human no matter how successful they’ve been. That’s a great perspective to have when you’re writing.

 I wrote my first novel, The Language of Light, before I started writing stories. But it spent a lot of time in a drawer. I wrote stories to hone my craft and get feedback: not just acceptance or rejection, but also comments from editors and fellow writers. I was a much better writer when I returned to the novel, which is probably why it got published after a last round of revisions, when it hadn’t before.

Lynn
How much of your research into the late sixties in Palo Alto was already in the research bible and what did you add as you wrote The Wednesday Sisters? How did the mansion influence you?

Meg
My history major in college left me steeped in the emotions of the sixties, if not with a great memory for dates and names, much less the ground-level detail a novelist needs (glass baby bottles? or plastic?). So, I did a lot of research on the particulars. The huge three-ring binder I ended up with (overloaded with 1960s bestseller lists, fashion photos, articles on medicine and science and women’s marches, and Miss America photos and quotes, among other things) started out in a much smaller folder, and grew as I discovered what I needed to know.

The mansion came in the process of confirming the details of a different park. I was so taken with a grainy photo of the real Dixon mansion in Pardee Park that I hauled the Wednesday Sisters’ benches and playground down the street. The more I poked around for the details, the better it got, too; everything about the deceased owner and her daughter — and how the park came to be — is factual.

Place can be such an evocative element if you can particularize it, and that’s what the mansion did for my park. It didn’t change any character’s story, but it gave me an unexpected avenue to explore emotions.

Lynn
Tell us about the day The Wednesday Sisters was conceived. Who sprang forth after Linda and how did their stories develop?

Meg
I sat down that day with a kernel of Brett — her white gloves — and she is actually described first in the journal entry, although Linda came with her — with her braid and hat — and that is described next.

Frankie is assumed in those descriptions as a separate narrator, though not described.

Kath came next, followed by Ally. I wrote a couple paragraphs on the story arc of each. Except for the braid, hat and gloves, there is very little about their physicality, ages, or even their writing. The journal entry does contemplate the fivesome doing something together, but that something is actually training for a road race.

Lynn
What most surprised you as you wrote?

Meg
What surprised me most was how very fun The Wednesday Sisters was to write; I think that’s in part because I had the spirit of my own closest friends with me as I worked.

Lynn
Experts say that writing is rewriting. How many rewrites did The Wednesday Sisters go through and what were you trying to accomplish in each one?

Meg
As Brett says in the novel, “What is a draft, anyway?” I’m only guessing, but I’d say at least twenty. One entire draft focused on making Brett and Ally more memorable. I did a dialog draft, looking only at dialog lines to make the voices distinct. But most drafts were just generic making-it -“better” passes.

Some didn’t necessarily improve the novel, either. At one point, I returned to a draft from six months earlier, did a redline of all the changes since and — starting from the earlier draft — picked the few good changes, leaving everything else on the cutting room floor.

Lynn
You bring characters and feelings to life with precise language that flows. Any tips for doing that?

Meg
I do think much of that particularity and flow comes in the rewriting for me. I try to focus on what Oakley Hall (How Fiction Works) calls “sensual particularity.” I like to pause on each scene to think about what each of my characters is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Even when they share a moment, they experience it differently.

I do think about the language, too: Is there a livelier verb I might use? A word that would make the sentence flow? Semicolon or a period here? As Willa Cather says, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened.” I think much of what makes new tellings appealing is the writing itself.

Lynn
I love that the women in the story say what they love before they criticize a writer’s work. What else makes a writing group work? How did you find your critique group?

Meg
The folks I turn to for critique now are my Nashville writing group, which was an offshoot of an open-to-the-public group that met in a local library. We miss meeting over coffee once a week, but we’ve found our long-distance marriage is better than any new love we might find closer to home.

The key for us is careful respect for each other’s work: our willingness to spend time reading closely and critiquing honestly. It’s a tricky business, forming a group that works. We did find once or twice along the way that a new member just wasn’t working. And one personality that doesn’t fit can blacken the whole beautifully boiling pot.

Lynn
How did your earlier book, The Language of Light, influence The Wednesday Sisters?

Meg
I learned how to write on The Language of Light. The hard way. Ten years. A gazillion drafts. One of the things I learned was that it’s nice to have an idea where I’m going pretty soon after I set out. I don’t have to end up there, but having a map is comforting and oddly liberating. I can peek down a side road, and follow it if it looks interesting, knowing that I can always backtrack to the original path.

Lynn
It’s so useful to hear about process from an author with your skill. What are you working on now?

Meg
I’m in the mucky middle of writing The Ms. Bradwells, a new novel I’ve just sold to Ballantine. It’s another friendship story, with four women who first meet in law school coming together years later. I’m not sure I’ll know exactly what it’s “about” beyond that until my writing group reads it. That’s part of what my writing group does for me: helps me understand what I’ve written.

Lynn
What a wonderful tribute to your writing group. Thank you for sharing these details about your journey. Writers, women, creative people, do not miss The Wednesday Sisters. Read it slowly or rip right through and start again.

You can learn more about the book, the author, and the wonderful discoveries that writers make at www.megwaiteclayton.com.