We recently connected with Janet Sumner Johnson and have shared our conversation below.

Janet Sumner, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

As a kid, my siblings and I would wait and watch at the window for the moment my dad got home from work. My dad had the best smile, and a twinkle in his eye. He knew how to make us feel important. He could pull a sliver out with his always handy pocketknife. He would relinquish his pocket change when I asked nicely. And best of all, he would play Monster in the Middle with us just before bed. He would lie down in the living room, and we’d race around him trying not to get caught. Or sometimes, we’d play airplane, where he’d lie on his back and raise us up high on his feet. He’d zoom us from side to side as he held our hands out like wings.

My mom, on the other hand, told the best stories. After brushing our teeth, we would snuggle up next to her (or onto her lap if we were lucky), and listen until they herded us off to bed. Sometimes the stories were from books, sometimes they were made up or from memory, but they always left us brimming with magic and the possibilities of life.

These nightly games and stories encouraged our imaginations. If we could dream it, we could do it. And this encouragement spread into the rest of our lives. Did I want to play on the school soccer team? My dad was there to kick the ball around and teach skills. Did I want to enter the school reflections contest? Try out for the school choir? Run for class president? They were there to encourage us and help us work for it. Did we always reach those dreams? Of course not. But that didn’t stop us from dreaming again and trying again.

These experiences were everything as I began working towards my dream of becoming an author. I needed a strong imagination. I needed a love for stories. I needed the discipline of hard work. I needed a firm belief that my dream was worth working towards. And I needed the courage to try again when I “failed.”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I didn’t begin on the path to becoming an author until after I’d graduated from college–or so I thought. When I finally admitted to myself that I wanted to become an author, I discovered that it had been there all along. My parents had kept stories and letters I’d written from a young age. In high school, I’d even submitted a story idea to Disney (for someone else to write, of course–yeah, that got rejected pretty fast). In college, I would write humorous essays to share with my roommates just to make them laugh. I think everyone but me knew I was destined to become an author.

With a love for children’s literature, I focused there, writing middle grade books (geared towards 9-13 year-olds), and picture books. My picture books tend to focus on helping kids feel empowered to solve their own problems. They often deal with family and friend relationships. Since I love to laugh, I try to create books that make kids (and parents) laugh as well.

My middle grade books also delve into family relationships, learning how to stand up for yourself, how to forgive others and yourself. I love a good redemption story. And I also love mysteries and adventure. My most recent releases, The Winterton Deception series, are puzzle mysteries with clues that readers can solve along with the characters.

My brand is humor with heart. Second chances and forgiveness. Building confidence and good relationships. My stories are hopeful and encouraging, even if my characters don’t get everything they want.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I signed with my second agent, we went on submission with a middle grade fantasy. That book (which I still love) never sold. Realistically, I knew that not all books sell. But having just been dumped by my first agent, and having had to abandon the book we’d been on sub with, I was shook. I debated if I was meant to be an author of more than one book. Maybe I couldn’t handle the rejection. Maybe I wasn’t good enough at writing, Maybe I didn’t have any more stories in me anyway. Maybe it was time to let go of that dream.

But I hated the thought of giving up writing. So instead, I pivoted. I began working on picture books, and that changed everything for me.

It was still hard. I still had moments of doubt. But I learned that sometimes, the best way around feeling stuck is to try something new. I went on to sell six picture books–all while continuing to write middle grade in the background. When I finally sold another middle grade book FIVE YEARS after the release of my first, I sat down and cried. I had done it.

Pivoting gave me a path to growth. A path around all those stuck feelings and my fears of being inadequate or an imposter. I was fortunate to be able to pivot back to my first love, but if I hadn’t gotten stuck, I might never have discovered how much I love writing picture books.

Writing is hard. It’s a constant battle with myself to keep going even when it feels pointless. But the thing is, art is never pointless. Even if I don’t sell a book, the writing of it shapes me in ways that matter and make me who I am. So make your art. Do the thing. Don’t give up on something you love. And celebrate every step, because all of it matters–even when you have to pivot for a minute.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I am a perfectionist. It is something I have struggled with my whole life. So when I began writing, I believed that I needed to writer perfect the first time. As such, I would slave over every sentence, getting each word just right before moving on. It would take a solid month just to write it. And then, I would take it to my critique group, and discover it still wasn’t perfect. With their notes, I would go back over it, and back over it, and back over it, until I was certain it was perfect before moving on.

And of course, when I finally finished that book (after a solid five years of writing), I discovered that it still wasn’t perfect and would need a lot of revision. Even though I never did get that book in publishable shape, I learned a lot–the most important of which was that perfectionism wasn’t my friend. If I wanted to succeed, I needed to unlearn all the habits I’d just built in writing that book.

I still struggle with perfectionism. So much so, that I have a mantra that I repeat to myself over and over as I write: “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to exist.” I had to learn that I needed a whole imperfect story before I began the process of revision. That allows me to evaluate the story as a whole so I can make big changes like adjusting the plot or characters before I begin working worrying about how smooth it reads.

It’s been a long path, and I wasted a lot of time at the beginning, but the process is a lot more fun . . . and a lot more productive as I’ve forced myself to change the way I write.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://janetsumnerjohnson.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janetsumnerjohnson/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janetsumnerjohnson
• Other: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/janetsumnerjohnson.bsky.social

Image Credits

Image credit for the one photo of me: Reb Sumner Photos

The rest of the images are owned by me.