Meet Angela Brown

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angela Brown a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Angela, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

Creativity can feel like a pretty elusive thing, especially when it’s your job to call upon it more or less on demand. The first year that I worked exclusively as a full-time writer, there were times when I felt like my creative well had simply gone dry. I’d wake in the morning, go sit at my desk, open my laptop, and expect that the words and ideas would just be there–that they’d magically appear simply because my computer screen was turned on. It took me a few months until I finally accepted that creativity doesn’t really work like that.

As someone who makes her living from her creative ideas, I’ve had to learn that a big part of my job is giving myself the space to actually be creative. Usually, for me, that means stepping away from my desk. Now, I’d say that in a typical week or month, only about fifty percent of my working hours are spent on writing. The other half I use to think. I take a lot of long quiet walks. I spend time alone working in my garden. It’s often during these quiet moments when I’m away from my computer and my stack of notebooks that my best ideas come to me.

I’ve also gotten better about remembering that, as a writer, the act of living is very much a part of my work. I can’t spend months hibernating in my writing space and then expect to craft a gripping, heartfelt story about life and relationships (this also simply isn’t realistic for me as a mother to two young children). As time has gone on, I’ve learned to give myself grace and not feel guilty for stepping away from a draft to get out to enjoy the day to day, as in the end these experiences–certain settings, bits of conversations and things–often end up influencing my future writing.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m the author of the novel, OLIVIA STRAUSS IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME, which debuted in January 2024 (Little A). The book was a Zibby Owens Book Club Pick and a Women’s Fiction Pick in Amazon’s First Reads Program. Prior to writing novels full-time, I wrote articles and essays for dozens of print and online publications, including REAL SIMPLE and the NEW YORK TIMES. I have an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a BA in English from the University of Vermont. I’m also the recipient of an Artist’s Grant from the Vermont Studio Center and have been called a “fresh new voice in fiction,” by outlets such as GOOD MORNING AMERICA. I live in New Jersey with my husband and two young children. My second novel is forthcoming in 2025 (Little A).

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Embrace the idea of rejection early: no matter what creative field you’re in, rejection, unfortunately, is a big part of it, and it doesn’t go away once you reach a certain point in your career. For every one thing you put out there, you’ll have several things behind the scenes that will be a pass. It’s just something you have to accept as a piece to the whole process.

Read reviews, but don’t obsess over them: it’s important to poke around and read reviews now and again. However, you just can’t obsess about the negative ones. They’ll always be there. I find it valuable to read them, just the same as the good ones, to see if there’s any bits and pieces in them that can help me to write a stronger draft the next time around. But in the end, you simply cannot please every person.

Keep your support circle small: when it comes to getting opinions on your work (ex: beta readers), I’m of the school of thought that you’re best to keep your immediate support circle small. It can be detrimental, in my experience, to the creative process to get too many opinions in your head. I have two people in particular who I run my early ideas and early drafts past (in addition, of course, to my agent and my editor). Other than that, I try to just go with my gut on what I think is right.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

Stepping away from your creative work is incredibly valuable, especially when you begin to feel overwhelmed by the project in question. It’s not uncommon for me, once I complete a draft and begin to feel inundated by the daunting task of having to edit it, to then put it down entirely for a few weeks so I can return to it with fresh eyes.

Also, as a full-time writer, I tend to be juggling multiple tasks at once. For instance, I might be writing a first draft for a new project, while also working through final edits on an earlier project that is further along, while also starting to conceptualize what I hope will be a future project. I find it incredibly helpful to have a yearly planner, which I fill in for an entire season at a time. This way, I can set goals for where I want to land with certain projects by the end of each quarter, which helps it all to seem a bit more manageable. Then, at the start of each week, I do something similar to see what I need to get done in the upcoming days in order for me to ultimately meet those longer term goals. The process of writing books can feel very intimidating–there’s so, so much work that goes into them, and so it’s not uncommon to feel overwhelmed by the process. But I do think that breaking it all down into smaller goals and taking it step by step can help it all to feel a lot more doable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.AngelaBrownBooks.com
• Instagram: @AngelaBrownBooks
• Other: Tik Tok: @AngelaBrownBooks

Image Credits

Image Credit: Sylvie Rosokoff, 2023