Meg, it's taken me quite some time to get used to green tea's & some are just plain yucky! I recommend Celestial Seasonings Green Tea & Decaf Green Tea. Very nice flavor, more like black tea.

Meg, thank you so much for sharing some of your writing process. I find it inspiring! The journal/scrapbook idea is something I would never have thought to do in a million years for my characters - though I do it for myself!

I've enjoyed the chats and thank you again for doing this!

All my best-
Jo

Thank you!!! Should I send you my address?

Just did the drawing for this week, and Cyndi is the winner of a first edition of Brenda Rickman Vantrease's The Mercy Seller.

Thanks again, everyone!

I am SO SORRY I missed today's chat! Memorial Day has me thinking today is Tuesday & I ran some errands late this am & just got home. I'm so disappointed!

>OMG! I think that I will take a separate journal with me, for when I am walking and people watching. The whole 24 hours is so emotional and so moving

Great idea, Cyndi! I carry a piece of paper and golf pencil in my pocket when I run. Maybe one of those nifty tiny versions of the kind of journal Hemingway made famous (forgetting what they are called, although I use one myself).

I have to head off myself, to take my car in for service (bleh!). I'll come back this afternoon to draw a name for The Mercy Seller, and will post the winner here.

Thanks, everyone!

I do sometime have my dear friend, Harriet Scott Chessman, read things for me on occasion. She's an amazingly thoughtful reader. She read a draft of TWS after I'd been trying to make it work for an agent who was representing it, and she gave me the courage to hang on to my view of the novel and leave the agent, rather than letting go of what I wanted the novel to be in order to keep working with him. For which I am forever grateful.

I have to get back to work now. Thanks so much for the chat and the inspiration. I look forward to meeting you tomorrow evening.

>Have you found anyone in CA that you like to write with? Or that you kick around ideas with?

I do have a wonderful network of writer pals in CA. We get together for dinner once a month to share ideas about writing and the writing life. And I have writer friends I hike with, play poker with, etc.

And several of us occasionally get together just to write quietly for a morning or an afternoon and then share a meal or a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.

It's really nice to have companionship like that. Definitely gets me through the publication process, which is wonderful but also shockingly stressful.

But I still go to my Nashville gang for critique. I tried a critique group with some writers out here whom I love, and whose writing I love, but for whatever reasons, the group dynamic for critiquing wasn't quite right.

Meg wrote: "BTW, Cyndi, I think the Chicks on Lit group has started a Chicks on Writ writing group. :-)


"
I was invited last week and wrote my first entry in my gratitude journal today!

OMG! I think that I will take a separate journal with me, for when I am walking and people watching. The whole 24 hours is so emotional and so moving.

BTW, Cyndi, I think the Chicks on Lit group has started a Chicks on Writ writing group. :-)

>I'll be doing Relay for Life with the American Cancer Society a month from today.

Bravo!

I ran the Nike Women's Half Marathon with Team in Training last fall, raising money for Blood Cancer research and treatment. It was a great experience: doing something good for myself and others at the same time, and in a supportive environment.

Have you found anyone in CA that you like to write with? Or that you kick around ideas with?

>I just have never looked at myself as having the "creative juices" it takes to write. But now I see that I don't have to write a novel, I can just put my thoughts on paper

Exactly. This is how I see myself as well. I don't think of myself as uniquely creative at all. One of the reasons I do a lot of research is that it gives me ideas that I can then build on.

> Unfortunately, most of the girls I went to high school with weren't at all good at the encouragement and not being jealous and catty. Guess it just shows how times change.

I think this is a problem of teenagers, that often falls away as time passes and life experiences pile up. Lots of amazing women out there, most looking for good friends, too.

Although I have to say that much as I thought I'd like to have a new writing group in California, where I now live, I've found my Nashville group impossible to replace. I think that has something to do with having started together when we had no clue what we were doing.

I saw that on your website, that is great. I'll be doing Relay for Life with the American Cancer Society a month from today.

Another really amazingly moving thing that one group of readers did was undertake to walk the Avon 2-day Walk under the team name The Wednesday Sisters. And they've not only reached their fundraising goal, but exceeded it.

I just have never looked at myself as having the "creative juices" it takes to write. But now I see that I don't have to write a novel, I can just put my thoughts on paper.

Really, one of the nicest comments I get from readers is that they've been inspired to write or paint or do whatever they dream of doing. It's the first step to reaching a dream, to commit yourself to trying to reach it.

Its hard for me to imagine being amongst a group of "real life" women like that. Unfortunately, most of the girls I went to high school with weren't at all good at the encouragement and not being jealous and catty. Guess it just shows how times change.

>I will be breaking out the journal and jotting notes down from now on.

Yay!!!! Do it!

>I loved that the ladies never showed their jealousy towards the others accomplishments.

One of the things that I love about Brenda is that we can admit to each other that we're green with envy, and it only makes us closer. I know her successes inspire me, and I think mine inspire her as well. it's pretty special to have a friend you've been critiquing with for - man, almost fifteen years now! - and both have success. Another member of our Nashville writing gang has also just published a book:Execution's Doorstep True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damnedby Leslie Lytle.

Being involved in these chats has really inspired me. Then reading about TWS was also inspiring. I will be breaking out the journal and jotting notes down from now on. So, thank you.

Actually, I expect I'll deliver it on time, if not early (although I don't have a complete first draft yes, so who knows?). Not sure how long after that it will be published, but we're likely looking at the summer of 2011. Wish I could write it faster, but there it is.

LOL!!

>Do you have a goal date as to when it will be out?

My contract requires me to deliver a manuscript by April 1 or next year, but I'm reserving the right to claim that was a well-planned April fools. ;-)

Meg wrote: ">Did Brenda's novel sell before or better than yours? Is that a bit of "real life" in the novel?

My first novel sold first, at a time when she'd queried and been turned down by so many agents that..."
I loved that the ladies never showed their jealousy towards the others accomplishments.

And she is still my best writer-pal. She and my husband Mac are my go-to readers. They were the first two to read The Wednesday Sisters.

>Did Brenda's novel sell before or better than yours? Is that a bit of "real life" in the novel?

My first novel sold first, at a time when she'd queried and been turned down by so many agents that she was at the give-up stage, I think. But then if Meg can...

And then hers sold better, in a two-book deal for six figures, with a splashy full page NYT Book Review ad when it came out. And I thought, if Brenda can...

I kept that Illuminator ad taped to my wall for inspiration for a long time, and I still keep it in my center desk drawer.

I'm writing it under contract with Random House, so I threw out a couple proposals for a next novel, and they chose this one. I'll dig out the description and post it in a minute.

Meg wrote: ">I would love that! I think the kids were growing up in such a wonderful time in their parent's lives. There ought to be a million stories that they could tell.

I should say that isn't the book I'..."
Do you have a goal date as to when it will be out?

And it's set in Maryland, where my first novel, The Language of Light A Novel, is set. Although that one was set in the Maryland horse country north of Baltimore, and the new one will be set in part on an island in the Chesapeake.

Did Brenda's novel sell before or better than yours? Is that a bit of "real life" in the novel?

>I would love that! I think the kids were growing up in such a wonderful time in their parent's lives. There ought to be a million stories that they could tell.

I should say that isn't the book I'm working on now though. But the one I'm working on now, called The Ms Bradwells, is a friendship story, so thematically (at least in that way) shares a couch with The Wednesday Sisters.

>I was surprised that Frankie's book didn't do so well, but in the end, I liked how it ended up that way.

So this one, I'll admit to. Frankie's writing story is very close to mine. The way she starts writing - the little bag of interesting things - although Frankie has been writing for a long time before that scene, just not admitting it to anyone. Her experience with her first book. And the importance of having friends to help her through, absolutely. TWS is dedicated to, among others, my "Tuesday Sister," Brenda Rickman Vantrease, author of The Illuminator and The Mercy Seller A Novel (which I'm giving away today).

As to which character is most like me, they all do contain little pieces of me, some of which I will admit to, others not so much!

Once I had their basic stories, I started poring through magazines of the time, looking at faces (makeup, hair, etc. - it's surprising how much even small things like lipstick color change). I copied photos and threw them in a scrap book, eventually scannning the main ones and doing about a four page narrative description of each characters physicallity, life, loves, and, of course, dreams.

Ellen's questions:

>Would you tell us about how you developed the characters in "The Wednesday Sisters"? How did you decide that the story would be told from Frankie's perspective? Which character do you think is the most like you?

I do what I call a character scrap book to develop characters. For TWS, I started with a few journal pages that laid out the basic story lines, and that journal entry came to me in the voice of Frankie, so that's why she tells the story. It's a bit of an odd narrative point of view, sort of 1st person omniscient. I looked for examples to figure out what I was doing, but couldn't find any, so finally fell back on well-this-is-the-way-my-uncle-jim-always-told-family-stories. It worked for him.

Where was your other novel set (what area geographically)?

Hi Ellen! I just checked and your book is already on my TBR!!

Ellen!

Everyone, this is Ellen BakerEllen Baker, whose wonderful novel, Keeping the House A Novel, should be on your TBR if you haven't read it already.

My first published story came out of an exercise which was: Imagine a character who wears something you would never wear, and write a few paragraphs describing him or her.

I was surprised that Frankie's book didn't do so well, but in the end, I liked how it ended up that way.

There are a lot of exercise to get ink flowing - I have a link to my favorite 13 on the writers page of my website (www.megwaiteclayton.com/writers.shtml). That's the hard part, getting started.

Hi Meg! Would you tell us about how you developed the characters in "The Wednesday Sisters"? How did you decide that the story would be told from Frankie's perspective? Which character do you think is the most like you?

And then she called on my first. One of the amazing blessings that have happened in my writing life - in retrospect!

Then she called time, and said, "Okay, who wants to read first."

I eyed the door, fully intending to flee while the first reader was reading lest I have to read myself.

>I liked how in order to get the ladies writing, the purse was dumped out and everyone was to pick something and write about it. I feel like that could work with me!

Truth better than fiction! This is indeed the way I started writing seriously, at a local university extension class where the teacher announced at the beginning of the first class that writers write, dumped out a brown lunch bag of interesting things, and told us to write for five minutes. "Don't worry, you won't have to read."

I've been asked whether I'd do another book with the Wednesday Sisters themselves, and you never know, but I do feel I've explored the most pivotal moment in their lives, and fear anything else would be something less. You never know though. I'm surprised as I go on in life to discover how many times I pivot myself.

Meg wrote: ">I was also thinking about a novel with the children. Or another one with the ladies once their lives took the paths that they took.

Laurel, you read my mind. I actually have an idea for another n..."
I would love that! I think the kids were growing up in such a wonderful time in their parent's lives. There ought to be a million stories that they could tell.