Clay Stafford talks with Janelle Brown on “Building Stories From Start to Finish”
Janelle Brown interviewed by Clay Stafford
This month, I had the pleasure of talking with Janelle Brown, the bestselling author known for her sharp storytelling and fearless blend of literary and suspense elements. In our conversation, we dig into how she writes, revises, procrastinates, rethinks, restructures, and ultimately discovers the heart of her novels. If you’re a writer who loves hearing how another writer gets the work done, you’ll enjoy this one. “Janelle, what is your writing schedule like? Are you an everyday writer?”
“When I’m in the zone, when I know what I’m doing and I’m excited, I write every day. I share an office with other writers and work while my kids are in school, from about 9:30 to 3:30 or 4:00. I try to write a thousand words a day. At the beginning, it can feel like pulling teeth, and on stuck days, I’m happy with a couple of hundred. But when I really know where the story is headed, it’s about getting it down as fast as I can. Then I can hit two thousand words. On retreats, I’ve written three or four thousand in a day, just writing nonstop.”
“My wife will ask how my day went, and I’ll say, ‘Great, I wrote a thousand words, and none are usable.’
“Oh, I do that all the time. You write all these words knowing most of them will end up in the trash.”
“It’s prolific, at least.”
“Even on the days when you toss 900 words, there’s usually a crumb, some little piece that captures what you were trying to say. Maybe you didn’t say it right, but you can work with that crumb. Almost no day is truly garbage; it’s all part of finding the thing that finally works.”
“What’s your biggest challenge in the first draft, other than the writing itself?”
“Procrastination. Especially in the beginning, when you’re not sure anything fits together yet. It’s easy to find a thousand things to do besides writing. Over time, I’ve learned that writer’s block is okay; sometimes I need to puzzle out the book in my head. I might not be writing, but I’m thinking about the characters. I’ll be walking down the street and suddenly realize, ‘Oh, that’s the conflict she needs.’ Maybe I haven’t written for two weeks, but I needed that space to figure it out.”
“And you give yourself permission to take that time off and let your subconscious do its work.”
“Exactly. When I’m stuck, I read books that feel relevant to what I’m trying to do, whether it’s structure or theme. While writing a coming-of-age novel, I kept returning to a few favorites. It felt like procrastination, but then I’d notice how another writer handled something, and think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ and try it myself. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not, but it always sparks new ideas. Reading is incredibly helpful.”
“Once you finish the draft and type THE END, what happens next?”
“I send it to a few trusted readers.”
“The very first rough draft?”
“Absolutely. They read it and tell me what’s working and what’s not. I do another pass based on their notes, then send it to my editor, and revise again after her feedback. That’s my general process.”
“How do you know when something needs a significant overhaul? Is that mostly experience?”
“Honestly, it’s usually feedback. Every big overhaul I’ve done has come because a trusted reader pointed out something wasn’t working. It’s hard to see that on your own. You think, ‘Maybe it works? I kind of like it.’ Then someone says, ‘No, actually it doesn’t.’ Sometimes I disagree and keep things because I love them, like the sections in What Kind of Paradise from the father’s point of view.”
“They were great for delivering backstory without bogging things down.”
“I came to that device late. Two-thirds of the way through, I suddenly had the idea to write those pieces in second person.”
“I was going to joke, ‘So then you decided to bring in a second person?’”
“I did! I sent it to readers, and some loved it, some hated it. But I liked it, and enough people loved it that I kept it. Maybe 30% disliked it; 70% liked it. I decided that was good enough.”
“In this book, what challenged you most in revision?”
“I had mistakes in the historical record, things like a wine that didn’t exist yet or a song from the wrong year. Lots of tedious, detailed work. And of course, after publication, I still found a few mistakes. Another challenge was writing from the point of view of someone very sheltered who steps into the world. I had to balance her noticing everything as new, without making every line, ‘This is new, and this is new,’ which gets tedious. I wanted her innocence to come through without hammering it.”
“You set her up early as resourceful, so when she’s a fish out of water, she still remains capable. Nothing felt forced.”
“Thank you. That balance was the work, her naiveté, and her resourcefulness. Writing from her older, adult perspective helped because some of her worldliness seeps into the memory.”
“How do you know when it’s finally ready to send to your editor?”
“When I never want to look at it again.”
“‘I’m so sick of this. I am so sick of this.’”
“Exactly. By then, I’ve gone over every word at least three times. Each day, I revise the previous day’s work before writing new pages, so everything gets at least two passes as I draft. When I finish, I go through the whole book again. I also revise in sections; my books naturally divide into acts. When I reach the end of a section, I revise it before moving on. By the time I’m done, each part has had multiple passes. Then I send it out.”
“Was this a year-long project?”
“About two years. That’s typical for my books.”
“From the moment the idea was sparked until now, about two years?”
“Yes.”
“What role did your editor and agent play in shaping the final book?”
“I love my agent. I’ve been with her for 18 years. She loved the book and didn’t have many notes. My editor worked closely with me on the balance between naiveté and worldliness, pacing the suspense, and line edits. But overall, it wasn’t a heavy edit, which was great. They both loved the book.”
“With every book we learn something. What did you learn from writing this one?”
“I’ve always mixed genres. My books are hard to categorize. This one mixed even more: literary, suspense, romance, historical. And I realized that writing something hard to define can create something truly unique. I never want to bore myself. With this book, I went in new directions, tried things I hadn’t before, and learned it’s okay; and readers will come along for the ride.”
“What advice do you give writers who are just beginning and have that ‘aha’ idea?”
“Find other writers at your stage. Join a workshop, an online community, a class, anything that connects you. Create a writers’ group. Hold each other accountable with deadlines: someone turns in 50 pages, someone else turns in 20. It keeps you moving, and the feedback is invaluable. Even now, when I’m stuck, I’ll hand pages to a writer friend. Sometimes all I need to hear is, ‘Keep going.’ Getting out of your own echo chamber is essential.”
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/.
Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of What Kind of Paradise, I’ll Be You, Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. An essayist and journalist, she has written for Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, Los Angeles Times, Salon, and more. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.
