Clay Stafford talks with Lauren Myracle on “Writing Through the Mess”

Lauren Myracle interviewed by Clay Stafford

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I read Plays Well with Others and knew immediately I needed to talk with #1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Myracle about it. Not just because the book is sharp, funny, and unsettling in all the right ways, but because it carries the fingerprints of a writer who is unafraid to wrestle openly with the mess of story, character, and self. Lauren doesn’t hide the struggle. She leans into it.

Lauren and I sat down over our mutual love of iced tea with lemon to talk about the creative chaos behind the book: the false confidence of early drafts, the humiliation and revelation of revision, the role of editors, and the moment when a story finally reveals what it’s really about. What emerged was an honest conversation about writing through uncertainty, trusting the process, and doing the heavy emotional lifting that great fiction demands. This is a conversation about making art out of disorder, and about what happens when a writer refuses to give up on a story, even when it looks like a complete wreck. “So, Lauren, for giving other writers insight, am I supposed to say, ‘Look at Lauren, she made a complete wreck of this book when she started?’”

Lauren laughs. “Well, I love you too, Clay!”

“That’s not me talking. I got that from the very end in your acknowledgements, when you basically said, ‘I’ve made it. Thank you to all the people who helped save me.’ ‘Save me” is pretty strong language.”

“Plays Well with Others was a piece of shit. Oh, my God.”

“Now we’re talking. But you know, first drafts are like that. Writers get lost in all the ideas, and it becomes a jumble. Then it’s a matter of figuring out how the pieces fit together in a way that forms a really nice, organic picture.”

“For me, it takes an outsider who knows how to find the story and who can tell me in a way that I can hear. One thing I’ve learned is that I respond much more to a carrot than a stick. Being told I’m stupid doesn’t motivate me. Isn’t that interesting? But if someone says, ‘Hey, this is going to work,’ I will work so hard to please that person. I will work so hard to make that editor happy. I don’t know if you do this, but some of the early drafts make me truly cringe.”

“All my early drafts make me cringe.”

“I want to crawl beneath the table and be like, ‘Oh my God, I could vomit.’ It was all over the place. I remember reading a Goodreads review of somebody else’s book where they mentioned all the navel-gazing, and I thought, ‘oh my God, my first draft was complete navel-gazing.’ It went on and on in a character’s head, with no action, and it was so boring. God knows how anyone helps find the story, but there is a story now, and it really is one I love.”

“Plays Well with Others is a very good story. I love the story. But at what point do you step back and think, ‘Okay, this jumbled mess is about as good as I can make it, and I’m going to show it to somebody right now?’ When do you decide that?”

“I do that far too early, as it turns out.”

“You’re not an auteur, then, like you know I am, because you don’t have this vision fully formed before anyone else gets involved?”

“Here comes the blissfully naïve part again, or maybe it’s just plain old stupid naïve. I should know better by now, but I usually think my first drafts are amazing. Then six months later, I realize they are absolute crap. When I finish a book, I think it’s time to show it to somebody, though I do polish it a bit first. Again and again, the illusion is shattered: this isn’t a book, it’s a seed, a draft, a beginning. Jordan Peele once said, ‘A first draft is just shoveling sand into the sandbox so you’ve got something to work with.’ I now fully embrace that you’re going to write a shitty first draft, but I still convince myself it’s not really that bad. Then it really is.”

My turn to laugh. “When you come back to a draft and realize it isn’t what you expected, what do you start working on first? Do you focus on characters, plot, or something else?”

“I think that’s such a good question. I’d say you have to find the story's entry point. A novel needs high stakes right from the start. In fantasy, we talk about it as the fabric of the universe being in peril, but it doesn’t have to be that extreme. One of my weaknesses is that I really like my characters, so I often write long scenes of them just talking, and that isn’t really a story. My husband likes to say, ‘Lauren, that’s just your process,’ but I probably should expedite it. What I would tell other authors, and myself too, is to spend time thinking about where you want to start before you start. If you already have a rough first draft, ask yourself: ‘Who is my main character? What is the pivot or fulcrum? What is the event, good or bad, that propels the story forward like toppling dominoes?’”

“Have you ever had a moment while rewriting where you feel like you’re doing all the right things, but the spontaneity of life starts to drain out of the scene?”

“For me, it’s more like thinking I can take this piece of mud and shape it, but I push and mash and rewrite it until it’s just this gray, nasty thing. What I really need to do is throw it all out. I’ve gotten better at realizing that, the whole ‘kill your darlings’ thing. I’ve learned to admit when a scene has to go because it’s boring. All they did was sit and talk. I love character and dialogue so much, but I’ve learned I need to add plot; things need to happen. Another writing teacher told me, put your character up in a tree and then throw rocks at them. It’s emotionally heavy lifting. The more you run from it, the more you delay your process. I would tell fellow authors, go ahead and put yourself in the fire.”

“What’s your relationship with your editor during the revision process?”

“I’m not protective at all. It took me a long time to get published, and I faced a lot of rejection. Early on, someone told me that any feedback you get, if an editor asks to see something again, that is your invitation to say, ‘Hell yeah, watch me make it better.’ I also learned a great deal while collaborating with Emily Lockhart and Sarah Mlynowski. Sarah would mark up my work with big Xs and write ‘boring.’ She did it so charmingly, and it taught me to ask beta readers to mark anything they skim. I trust some editors more than others, but even feedback from someone I don’t trust usually means there’s something off.”

“Do you ever notice themes in a draft you didn’t see while writing?”

“Absolutely. That’s the exhilarating part. That moment of, ‘Dang, I put that in there and didn’t even know it.’ For this book, because it went through so many drafts, it took a while to find. What I discovered was that it’s really about how people deal with being wounded. We are all wounded, children and adults alike.”

“How do you know when a book is finally finished?”

“I imagine that almost every single one of my published books I could make better, even now. But at the time it was ready to be published, it was done. I know a book is done when my editor says, ‘Yeah, you’ve got this; it’s done.’

“And those are happy words.”

“Yes, indeed. Bless your heart.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Killer Nashville University streaming service. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/.

Lauren Myracle is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and three cats, who may or may not be plotting to frame her for their next act of mischief.

https://www.laurenmyracle.com/books-for-adults