We were lucky to catch up with Beth Uznis Johnson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Beth, appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
The kindest thing anyone has ever done for me was also the most generous because it involved ample amounts of a rare and precious commodity: time. In 2017, a top editor at a New York publisher, who had decided against acquiring my novel because it wasn’t right for her, took the time anyway to provide thoughtful edits and returned the manuscript with a note to keep going.
Anyone in publishing understands how many people are trying to write and publish books. Literary agents and editors at publishing houses receive hundreds of submissions each month. They have to be extremely selective because there are not enough hours in a day to come close to reading half of what is submitted to them for consideration.
The editor had only interacted with me and my writing one time before, at a writing workshop for graduates of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. I had been warned by classmates that this editor was very straightforward in delivering feedback, which can feel harsh to a writer. I think the exact words were, “Be ready for red line edits all over the very first page.” And they were right. It was not an easy workshop, but it helped me tremendously when the editor told me in our 1:1 conference that she usually only marks up manuscripts when she sees potential.
When she took the time to offer comments on my novel in 2017, I was deeply touched she remembered me and took the time to offer feedback on something she wasn’t going to buy. She doesn’t have time for that! I also knew how valuable editorial feedback is from an industry professional. I would have had to pay serious money for that type of expertise. I spent a lot of time thinking about her comments and how I might approach a major revision.
I gave the novel a new title, Coming Clean, and got to work deepening the backstory of the protagonist, a self-employed cleaning lady named Dawn. The revision took me a couple more years and the novel transformed into one where Dawn was keeping a difficult secret about the death of her fiance Terry in a motorcycle crash. Dawn’s relationship with her mother was further developed and, even more so, her relationship with Terry’s mother. In the end, Dawn was a much more complex character and Coming Clean had new themes and threads to pull the story forward.
I felt so good about the project when I finished. When I submitted the manuscript to the literary small press, Regal House Publishing, Jaynie Royal wrote me back to say she was taking the book to their next acquisitions meeting. I signed my book contract with Regal House in November 2022 and it was released on January 9, 2024. I owe so much to that editor, Barbara Jones, for taking the time for my book and giving comments when she didn’t have to. I’ll be forever grateful to Barbara for pointing me in the direction to finally accomplish my goal of publishing a novel.
Beth, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I always had dreams of writing a novel, but it wasn’t until my baby son Alex was home sick one day that I decided: this day job in marketing is not my destiny. I should write a novel so I can stay home to write and take care of Alex. It was a wildly unrealistic plan that actually took going back to school, keeping the day job, two decades, and hundreds of rejection letters. But hey, what writer has it easy? Alex is 23 years old now, a college graduate with his own apartment in Chicago. His baby brother Kevin is 19. Getting Coming Clean published was worth the wait and the work.
It was that labor of love that taught both my sons to never give up. I found my true self in creative writing. My journey to a published book took me to graduate school for a Masters of Fine Art in fiction where I found a community of other writers. Since graduating in 2010, I’ve attended dozens of writing conferences and workshops, published short stories and essays in some of the most reputable literary journals, and built credentials and contacts in publishing.
Coming Clean is the fourth novel I drafted, but the first to find a home with Regal House Publishing. I have high hopes for my other projects and, at 52, see no reason not to believe maybe someday I’ll actually be able to lose the day job and make a living as a creative writer. Until then, I have found meaningful work at the University of Chicago, writing fundraising materials for the UChicago Medicine Biological Sciences Division. There are writing jobs out there, especially in health care, where you get to tell inspiring stories.
Building a writing community kept me going—the summer workshops, the AWP Conference, the Women’s Fiction Writer’s Association daily write-ins. These connections made a difference when it came to finding a publisher. Coming Clean was always my favorite project and the one I kept returning to. The idea of a cleaning lady having access to 5 homes worth of people’s stuff was too enticing to give up. The novel takes place over one week. Dawn cleans a different home each day. In the process, Dawn’s backstory unfolds. She is grieving from the death of her fiancé, Terry, in a motorcycle crash. She lives in a trailer. She cleans houses for a living. This is not the life she pictured. But, Dawn changes and grows. Matthew’s photography project forces her to compare her life to her customer’s. She makes major decisions, but most importantly, comes clean about a secret she’s been keeping since Terry’s death.
What I’m most proud of is having not given up. There were plenty of times I felt like quitting, but perseverance has taught me a lot of valuable life lessons.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
People often ask how I got the idea to write a novel about a cleaning lady, if I ever cleaned houses, or if I based the houses in the novel on real-life people I know. The truth is that small details from real life often spark my ideas, but the fun of writing fiction–for me–is allowing my imagination to run wild in creating a story.
The initial spark for a character who cleans houses came one evening at my then-home in suburban Detroit when I realized for the umpteenth time that my cleaning lady once again rearranged the display of silk flowers on my TV cabinet. I moved them back, wondering if she did it just to mess with me. The idea struck me as so hilarious I began laughing at the idea we were playing a back-and-forth kind of game with each player refusing to lose.
That detail stayed in the book, but my actual cleaning lady was in her 60s and Dawn in the novel is 22. Some of the houses she cleans have details from places I’ve been in my life–like the safari-themed den in the McIntyre’s mansion–but the rest is completely imagined.
Another example is a short story I wrote called “Deep Dark Tan.” The idea was sparked when I was in Orlando with my family on a theme park vacation. We stayed at an off-site condo with a great pool where there was an elderly lady in a bikini who was more suntanned than anyone we’d ever seen. My son asked, “Mommy, why is that old lady so tan?” I told him I didn’t know, but I’d write a story about it. It turned out that Sylvia Morris, my tan character, had lost her adult son to addiction and copes with sunbathing and beer.
Later, I realized how much I disliked that theme park vacation–and theme parks in general. That led to my next novel project called The Morning People about one mom’s reluctant visit to Orlando. Since everyone loves Disney, I invented ParkLando, Disney’s store-brand neighbor. The main character, Marcia, stays sane with a morning walk (even though she doesn’t exercise) and invents lives for the people she sees. The mom in the book is nothing like me except that she doesn’t like theme parks either. Marcia’s character allows for social commentary on the expensive notion of America’s “perfect” family trip. She’s completely wrong about the stories she makes up about the morning people she sees on her walks. Marcia has to come to terms with a of misconceptions in the book, including why her family needs her to get on board with the idea of ParkLando.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding part of being a novelist is having people share the details and parts of the story that stick with them. Human beings are natural storytellers and it is stories that keep us going every day. It is how stories are told that make them so unique. For example, a woman commented to me about the scene in Coming Clean where Dawn runs into one of her customers at the pharmacy. They share a cigarette and some wine outside at a picnic table. Dawn watches the ash of the cigarette drop onto the table and roll off the edge like a crooked little ball. The details stuck with the woman; she said she’s seen it so many times but never thought about it before.
Another reader wrote me about a scene where Dawn returns a house key to a customer and remarks about a $500 bonus she’s been given. The wife in the scene doesn’t realize it was her husband who gave Dawn the bonus. The reader really liked the secrecy Dawn shares in that scene with the husband, and how the wife is completely clueless. She said she laughed out loud. I’d expected the scene to be more startling than funny, but everyone reads in different ways.
I love knowing that my storytelling will stick with different readers in various ways depending on their lives and backgrounds. It makes something like a novel feel like an endless piece of art that’s open to interpretation.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bethujohnson.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buzjohn/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buzjohn1/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethuznisjohnson/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/buzjohn
Image Credits
Author photo by Edda Pacifico.