"The Mastery of the Thing!"

Today on Meg Waite Clayton's 1st Books blog, Harriet Scott Chessman contributes a new post in which she discusses candidly, movingly, and inspiringly, the more than seven years that went into the writing and publication of The Beauty of Ordinary Things. The post is a beautiful meditation on the unforeseen journey a writer's work can take.

"What I strove to gain, as I discovered Sister Clare’s voice and revised the manuscript in the fall of 2007, was a clearer sense of what the heck my story was about – I mean, what it was really about. A few generous writer friends, and my fiercely intelligent daughter, read the manuscript and gave me superb advice.  And over the course of the following year, my agent sent it to over twenty-five publishers.  She gave it her all.  I received positive comments from a bunch of editors, yet no contract.  Discouraged, one day I placed the manuscript on a shelf. ..."

Read the rest here.