Brandi Megan Granett Says “No Excuses” When It Comes To Writing

Today we welcome one of my fellow Tall Poppy Writers to Women’s Fiction Writers! Brandi Megan Granett has a long publishing history and a brand new novel, TRIPLE LOVE SCORE. She also has great advice for just sitting down and getting it done! 

Please welcome Brandi to WFW! 

Amy xo

Author Brandi Megan Granett Says “No Excuses” When It Comes To Writing

Amy: Congratulations on TRIPLE LOVE SCORE! Can you tell us a little bit about the premise of this novel?

Brandi: Miranda Shane lives a quiet life among books and letters as a professor in a small upstate town. When the playing-by-the-rules poet throws out convention and begins to use a Scrabble board instead of paper to write, she sets off a chain of events that rattles her carefully planned world. Her awakening propels her to take risks and seize chances she previously let slip by, including a game-changing offer from the man she let slip away. But when the revelation of an affair with a graduate student threatens the new life Miranda created, she is forced to decide between love or poetry.

Amy: What moment or person or place sparked the idea for this book? Do you remember how/when/where that happened?

Brandi:  The short answer to this is that I fell in love. After my divorce, all of sudden my best friend became something more. And I really started to have fun again on all fronts. This inspired me to start writing after a long writing drought. Each day I tried to write something to my now boyfriend; something to make him laugh, smile or cry, and well, you know, maybe think about getting home early. In Triple Love Score, Miranda explores the choices she has to make her own life, much as I did at the time I wrote it.

Amy: This isn’t your first novel. Can you share with us a little about your publishing history?

Brandi: My first novel, My Intended, was published in 2000 with William Morrow. Harper Collins bought Morrow in the middle of my contract, a little bit before the book came out. I lost my entire team–the editor, the marketing team–to layoffs. At the same time, my daughter was born so, needless to say, being a mom easily eclipsed the experience of being a first time novelist. I am excited to be trying something new this time by publishing with Wyatt-Mackenzie, a small publisher who is really working to support Triple Love Score and me. I love that I have someone on my team that didn’t flinch when I missed a meeting because I promised my daughter we would take our Corgi, Red Sharkey, out for ice cream for his birthday.

Amy: We all grow and change through the years. Has your approach to novel writing changed? Was this gradual and organic or intentional?

Brandi: My process certainly evolved. My Intended was written over the course of two years through my workshops in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College. In the early 2000s, I did NaNoWriMo and finished creating a novel titled Tarnished, which I later revised for my PhD in Creative Writing. After the frenetic pace of NaNoWriMo left me never wanting to write again, but amazed at the power of a daily practice, I decided to try again, albeit with a less ambitious daily goal of 500 words. And sure enough, if you put your butt in the chair every day, the work gets done, and Triple Love Score came into being. This practice really resonates with me, and I still use it when I am working on my next novel, Straight Shooter.

Amy: What’s your best advice for aspiring authors of women’s fiction in today’s publishing climate?

Brandi: My best advice has a few different parts:
1. Write every day. No excuses. No scented candles. No ceremony. Just do it.
2. Don’t revise before the story is done. You will be wasting time polishing the first page and never get to the end.
3. Build a community. My membership in the Tall Poppy Writers, a collective of women fiction writers, helps me to keep perspective, make connections, and learn new things about this writing game all the time.

Brandi Megan Granett is an author, online English professor, and writing coach. She earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University and her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her latest novel, Triple Love Score, is  published by Wyatt-Mackenzie. Morrow published her first novel, My Intended, in 2000. Her short fiction appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Folio, Pleiades, and other literary magazines and is collected in the volume, Cars and Other Things That Get Around. When she is not writing or teaching or mothering, you will find her on the archery range.

Find out more about Brandi on her website and check out her Huffington Post column.