We were lucky to catch up with Lauren Kay Johnson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Lauren Kay, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
I write predominantly personal essay and memoir, so my work is an extension of myself and my life; therefore, a misunderstanding or mischaracterization of my work is in a lot of ways misunderstanding or mischaracterizing ME. Writing from within a niche community—especially one as politicized as the military—comes with a lot of preconceptions and expectations. Being a woman adds a whole other layer. My writing has never told traditional/familiar military stories—the combat-focused ones you see in Hollywood films and bestselling memoirs by generals and special ops guys—because that’s not my story. And, while those are very valid and important narratives, they are far from the only military experiences. I’ve always felt compelled to push back against that mainstream narrative and the nuance in war, and in the humans engaged in it.
I promise I’ll answer your question… that was very lengthy preamble!
Over a decade ago (eek!), I had my first major publication when I won an essay contest with Glamour magazine. My essay focused on seeking mental health care after I returned from Afghanistan and all the guilt and stigma I felt because I didn’t have a traditional trauma-inducing deployed experience. I hadn’t been in combat. I hadn’t been a victim of Military Sexual Trauma. No one in my unit was killed or seriously injured. I was basically a bureaucrat! The essay unpacked the complicated emotions around that initial visit to the mental health clinic and feeling I didn’t deserve to be there and started to explore the less obvious trauma woven through my experience. As an information operations/public affairs officer, I was the voice of the military and the filter between what happened on the ground and what the public learned about. (If you don’t know much about the war in Afghanistan, spoiler alert: it involved a lot of censorship and misinformation.) At the time, the idea of moral injury hadn’t entered the mainstream conversation yet; it was essentially either PTSD or nothing, very black and white. I wrote from the gray area.
When the article came out, I got a ton of hate mail, largely from within the military community. “How dare you take resources from someone with REAL PTSD, “Go back to the kitchen where you belong.” All sorts of the colorful language the military is known for. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t’ take it personally. It was a two-fold attack: for living the experience in the first place, and then for deigning to write about it. But then I heard from others who occupied that gray area, telling me they felt validated for the first time. I heard from non-military folks who said I had given them new perspective on the military and Afghanistan. That’s when my writing really became about more than me and my experience. I realized I’d struck a nerve (for better or worse!), and that these non-traditional military stories needed to be told.
Hate mail and trolls have followed me along my career, and, again, I’d be lying if I said I never take it personally. That initial barrage thickened my skin, though, and reminded me what I’m writing for. I’m writing because I have a voice that deserves to be heard and a story that deserves to be told. I hope I’m writing, too, on behalf of other voices that have been silenced and stories that have been invalidated or hidden with shame.
Lauren Kay, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I grew up in a military family: both of my grandfathers served in the WWII era, and my mom was a nurse in the Army reserves who deployed in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm when I was seven years old. So you could say I joined the family business. (Like many family businesses, I had very little idea what I was getting into!) At my core, though, I’ve always been a writer. I used to wander around the backyard talking to myself and say I was “writing books!” I was that weird kid in school who actually liked writing essays.
As a military public affairs officer and Department of Defense journalist, I got hooked on nonfiction writing. People are fascinating and complicated and strange. I love the connective power of stories. My memoir, The Fine Art of Camouflage, is about my military experience, but it’s also a story of family expectations, generational trauma, first jobs, first loves, coming of age and realizing the world is far from black and white. One my favorite things about the book has been getting feedback from people who have no military connection that they related to elements of my story. Stories remind us what it means to be human, and that we’re never alone in our human experiences.
I love when people read my writing and share that it wasn’t what they expected from a veteran, or that they didn’t expect to be interested in a miliary memoir. I don’t want to write something expected or reinforce stereotypes. I don’t want to be a typical veteran or a typical woman. What is a typical woman, anyway?
As a writing consultant/coach and an editor for a literary journal, I’m drawn to stories that push back against the mainstream and challenge expectations. I enjoy working with writers to help them dig a little deeper, delve into the nuances of an experience, and highlight the fresh perspective they bring from their unique vantage point.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
It’s a little on-the-nose, but becoming a mother was a huge pivot point in my life in so many ways. My twin daughters were two months old when U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan. I had my book contract at the time and was doing a final revision of the manuscript, and I saw it all through a new lens. Like many veterans, I wondered what my deployment and the war as a whole meant. What was it for? Was it worth it? I thought about the legacy we as a nation were leaving for our children, and I as a mother was leaving for my girls. For the first time, I understood how complicated it was for my mom to navigate what to share about her military experience. I started thinking about what I would someday tell my daughters. The withdrawal and new motherhood became the epilogue to my book.
My girls weren’t yet two when the book came out. I had a very romanticized view of what a book launch would be, which was based around a) a major publishing house throwing publicity money my way (ha!), and b) zero other responsibilities or obligations on my time. I had to strike a balance between tending to my book baby and my actual babies (not to mention that whole job thing that provides money to support all three babies!). It was challenging to reconcile not being able to put my full energy behind launching this thing I had poured so much of myself into for so long, and it was equally challenging to reconcile not being fully present with my young daughters. That spring was a whirlwind, but ultimately I’m very proud of everything I was able to do, with my book and as a new mom. I want to share those accomplishments with my daughters someday. I want them to know that I’m more than just their mother, that women can be many things (just like veterans!). I had that example in my life, and I want to provide it for my girls.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
It’s exceptionally challenging to balance being a productive artist and a fully functional, responsible adult! I work full time and have three-year-old twins, so I scrap together tiny fragments of writing time when I have it, but time is only half the battle—you need brain space to produce creatively, and, on a good day, my brain is sleep-deprived mush. Personal writing is like giving yourself an extended therapy session; ideally, you need time to work your way into the heart of the issues you’re exploring, time to dwell there and sort things out, and then time to recover before reentering society. Unfortunately, that formula isn’t super compatible with day-to-day life!
It’s also exceptionally challenging to make a living as an artist. For authors, a “very nice book deal” is between $50,000-$99,000. That may seem like a decent chunk of change for one “product,” but when someone spends 5 or 10 years writing a book (12 in my case!) the annual salary is pretty abysmal, plus a percentage goes to the agent who brokered the deal. That amount is considered a “book advance,” meaning it’s an advance against the book’s projected earnings; the publisher is making an upfront payment to author in the hopes they will earn back their investment. Until a book “earns out” and the publisher recoups their full investment from book sales, the author doesn’t receive any royalties. Most books never earn out, so the advance is the only money an author ever makes. A lot of indie presses can only offer very small advances or no advances at all (with no advance the author generally earns royalties right away, but this still only equates to about $1 per copy sold!). These days authors are also expected to do a lot of the publicity work themselves too, even at larger presses, and costs (and time investment) add up quickly: creating and hosting an author website, travel for book events, marketing materials, hiring support like a web designer or publicist, placing advertisements, sending books to reviewers, entering book awards (which often include an entrance fee and sending physical copies to judges), etc.
With very few exceptions, writers don’t write for money. We write because we love to write, feel compelled to write, become obsessed with a topic or idea that we need to explore. It’s truly a calling.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://laurenkayjohnson.com
- Instagram: @laurenkayjay
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaurenKayJ/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenkayjohnson
- Twitter: @laurenkayj
Image Credits
Becky Fuller Photo
MilSpeak Books/Michelle Bradford Art
Courtesy of Lauren Kay Johnson