Janie Chang gets creative after dinner...
The bestselling Canadian author on writing all night and finding her people.
I’m enormously grateful that Janie and I are friends, and that we share the same literary agent. Not only does she write gorgeous, moving novels (I wept at the ending of Library of Legends), she’d the kind of writer who helps other writers in times of need. When I was having trouble revising a book, I posted on a private Facebook page for help, and she put her hand up to read the book—which she did quickly, and with such a keen and generous eye. Her feedback really helped me get the book where it needed to go.
Janie says she always dreamed of becoming a writer, but she got sidetracked by a career in the tech industry. After 25-plus years in the corporate world, she finally got out of tech and into fiction. Thank goodness for us!
She is also a devoted cat mama and has an actual ladder in her home library! (Swoon.) Her latest book, The Phoenix Crown which she co-wrote with Kate Quinn (of The Alice Network and other major novels), just came out on February 13 and is in my LibroFM queue. Marie Benedict has already deemed it “a page-turning masterpiece” which I have no doubt is exactly entirely accurate - it’s already a Toronto Star bestseller!
VITAL STATS:
Your age when your first novel published, and the title of that novel: 53, Three Souls
Your age now: 63
How many novels you published to date: 4.5 (the 0.5 is the one I co-wrote with Kate Quinn). OK, 5 novels.
What’s your next novel and its pub date if you have it: The Fourth Princess in May 2025 if all goes well
INTERVIEW:
1. How many novels did you complete before the one that became your first published novel?
My first published novel was also the first novel I wrote – but to give this some context, I took a one-year course in creative writing (The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver). The plan was to write and complete my first novel during this time. It took longer than that—what was I thinking? But this manuscript was the project I worked on for the course and it was workshopped by classmates and ended up being decent enough to get an agent interested. This was in October of 2011. The agent asked me to get it professionally edited one more time because it’s so competitive out there for emerging writers. The resulting revision was the book she sold to HarperCollins Canada at the end of 2012.
2. What kinds of jobs did you have to support yourself while you wrote? Are you still doing one of them?
By the time I entered the creative writing program in 2011, I had backed out of the corporate world and was doing freelance work in the tech industry, mostly marketing communications and product marketing. I backed out even more when my mother had to go into care, due to advanced dementia. I have not worked in the tech industry since 2019 and don’t miss it at all. It was time for a new life chapter.
3. What was the writing routine in which you wrote the novel that became your first published? How long did it take to write that book?
I wrote every night, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning, mostly because I’m a night owl and get creative after dinner. It took about 18 months to write Three Souls, including editing and revisions, before the book sold. The good thing about being part of a creative writing program was that we had to bring in chapters of our writing project every week to be workshopped, so there was pressure to show up in class with evidence of progress!
4. What was your darkest moment before selling your first novel?
I was clueless, so didn’t know enough to recognize dark moments. I was so happy just to get published.
5. What advice about writing helps you stick with it?
This is the advice I always give new writers and I also admit it’s harder to do than it sounds: Write, write, write. It doesn’t matter if you write crap. You can always edit crap. You can’t edit a blank page.
6. What is your favorite part about the writing life?
It all came together for me when I attended my first Historical Novel Society conference. I’d found my tribe. And that’s been the single greatest pleasure of becoming an author – finding community with other authors. Some aspects of this business are weirdly specific and only other authors understand its joys and miseries well enough to say the right things in celebration or consolation.
Thank you, Janie! I love this last part about finding your people - and I feel so lucky to be part of your community.
Goodness, thank you for these interviews! What an inspiration.
Great interview. I’m so thrilled to read her latest collaboration with Kate Quinn.