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Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

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March 23, 2010 By Meg Waite Clayton

Tim O'Brien on Tenacity and Stubbornness

I read Tim O’Brien’s amazing short story, “The Things They Carried” in the first writing class I took. I’ve read it many times since, but I wouldn’t need to have reread it even once to remember its incantatory beauty and emotional weight. I had the great fortune to study with Tim at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference – where he gave me the single best piece of advice I’ve gotten as a writer. He is an amazing teacher as well as an amazing writer.
Houghton Mifflin has just released a 20th Anniversary Edition of the book the story appears in The Things They Carried. In celebration of that, I’m sharing an O’Brien quote I read this morning in GalleyCat, which sums up the message I try to convey on 1st Books:
“I try to preach to students tenacity and stubbornness–to be a kind of mule walking up the mountain, to keep plodding. Inspiration is important, but you’re not going to get it on a bowling alley or on a golf course or all the other things you could be doing. If you’re not sitting there inspiration is simply going to pass.” – Tim O’Brien
He says in the same piece, “Just in my case, for a thing to end up any good–that is in its lasting power or lasting in its dance of language–requires a thing to sit for awhile on the desk.” So I offer this blog post with the caveat that it has, indeed, not been sitting on the desk anywhere near long enough. My novels do sit, and are much better for the time I spend away from them – but I didn’t want to wait the requisite sitting time to urge anyone who doesn’t own a copy of The Things They Carried to pick up this new edition. – Meg

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Filed Under: Meg's Posts, Writing Quotes and Other Literary Fun Tagged With: The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, writing tips

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

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