Spring-2023

been a huge reader. I think my desire to write was less about writing to tell stories,” she says, “and more about what novels did for me, cre- ating a kind of magic. But I was a math-and-sci- ence girl. My weakness was English.” In fact, English was the only non-Advanced Placement class she ever took in high school. She got through it by taking a Tolkien class, pass-fail. “I admit and can embrace that I’m Type A. I like to be right and to know I am. In math,” she says, “you do. In English, you can’t be sure. As a writer, I see all those things that are not con- crete; the bird on the wire can mean so many things to so many people.” So, Clayton became a corporate attorney in a big law firm, working hundred-hour weeks, and finding a concrete kind of success. It was her husband, Mac Clayton, having already cul- minated his own law career, who gave her per- mission to reconsider her career path. “Mac poured me a glass of wine and asked if there was anything else I’d like to do, if I were to set aside what I knew I could do to explore something else. I said I’d like to be a novelist. His confidence in me, his belief I could do it,” she says,“gave me permission to try, even if I failed.” Not trying, he told her, was the only real definition of failure. Clayton left law at age 32. She was up for partner at her firm, and when it didn’t happen, it felt like the push she needed, another sign of permission. Besides, she was pregnant with her second child. It was time for a change. “For me, being a novelist meant being able to leap tall literary buildings in a single bound,” she wrote. “So I had gone off to the University of Michigan, thinking I would become a doctor and emerged as a corporate lawyer in a tidy blue suit. It took time to work up the nerve to give writing a serious try.” Her second son was 11 when she published her first novel, in 2003. A story of starting over by fleeing the family home as a way to escape grief and rediscover one’s self,“The Language of Light: A Novel,” was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. The award, granted to a United States citizen for a previously unpublished work of fic- tion that addresses social justice, was established by legendary author Barbara Kingsolver. “The Postmistress of Paris” is Clayton’s eighth novel. “Writing,” says Clayton, “is a lot harder than it looks.” For more information about Meg Waite Clayton, visit www.megwaiteclayton.com . 118 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 Above: “The Last Train to London,” published in 2019, topped numerous bestseller lists. Below: Clayton spent extensive time in France researching her latest novel. Photo: Meg Waite Clayton Photo: McCord Clayton She had known she wanted to be a writer since she was a child. Yet it took Clayton a long time to give herself per- mission to pursue it.