 In this Q&A, Laurel Saville offers the kind of hard-won clarity that only comes from decades in the trenches. A novelist, memoirist, and longtime working writer, Saville offers the kind of hard-won clarity that only comes from decades in the trenches. A novelist, memoirist, and longtime working writer, Saville talks about treating the page like a garden, the discipline of knowing when a book is “good enough,” and the resilience needed to keep going after twenty years of hurdles, setbacks, and second chances. These powerful reminders return us to a steadying truth: it is writing, not publishing, that makes you a writer. And it is in the writing itself that we find the chance for real joy and lasting connection.  What rituals or tools help you stay productive without burning out? I think what causes burnout it not the actual work of writing, but some of the highfalutin’ notions about writing, like you must find “inspiration” because your goal is to create “art.” To me, writing is like gardening. Most of gardening is getting rid of the weeds so other, more lovely or useful plants can grow. You have to spend a lot of time down on your knees in the dirt, grubbing away at those persistent, ungraceful, ugly things that keep popping up – like cliches and short cuts and purple prose – to make room for those fragile and delicate sentiments that took root in the hothouse of your imagination and need to be nurtured in the rough soil of the printed page until they grow into those robust ideas and well-rounded characters that cause passers-by to stop and gasp at their beauty and relevance. My “ritual” is to work like I’m word farmer. How do you tackle writer’s block when you’re stuck mid-plot or with a flat character? Put that character into an entirely different situation and see what they do. Take up a different part of the story line. Write something else, something short and focused like a compact essay, a shared memory in a note to an old friend, a single scene. Lie down for a nap or go take a walk outside. What’s your secret to creating characters that feel alive and unforgettable? Do you start with backstory, flaws, or something else? My characters often come to me as part of a scene that I observe in the real world and find evocative or as something that pops up in my imagination. The initial writing prompt is me figuring out how that person got into that scene. As I fill in the backstory, that character comes to life. Funny story: the inspiration for my second novel was a scene that was part imagined and part observed of a young woman on a snowmobile with her father, racing over the flat surface of a white field in the dark of a New York State winter, looking into the windows of farmhouses she passed in the distance, wondering what made them glow blue. I wanted to know how she got into that field, why she had no mother, and how come she didn’t recognize the light of a television. In my search for her, I ended up writing an entire novel about her parents. The next novel was about her, but by then she was someone very different and that scene never made it to the page. Revision can often feel endless. How do you know when your book is done? First, let me say this: revision is writing. It’s the bulk of writing. Accepting and relishing this makes it easier to find the end. Personally, much of the writing I have done has been corporate communications work that work required me to incorporate lots of other people’s ideas, adhere to multiple constraints, anticipate approval by a team of people, and deliver at an unyielding deadline. Contrary to what most people think, I found these restrictions provided pressure that pushed my creativity into crystalline clarity. They also provided a continual education in letting go at “good enough.” Any piece of writing has a job to do. Once it’s done, let it go.
From querying agents to hitting bestseller lists, what was your biggest publishing hurdle, and how did you overcome it? Hurdles are part of the process. It took me 20 +/- minus years of hurdles to get my memoir published. The editor who so beautifully handled two of my novels confessed that the catastrophe of the third represented the biggest mistake of her publishing career. Magazines I wrote for went out of business, a creative director made up complaints about me to get me off the job so he could co-opt my work and claim it as his own, a publicist went AWOL right as one of my books launched. You overcome all this by being stubborn, scrappy, a shameless promoter of your work, and also willing to sometimes let one thing and all your hopes for it go and just get onto the writing the next. How do you balance writing with the business side—marketing, social media, or day jobs—and still protect your creative energy? For me, creative tasks create creative energy, don’t deplete it, and I think writing and the business of publishing are both creative tasks. I also set up my writing and business goals to be achievable and gratifying rather than open-ended and frustrating. Instead of telling myself I must “improve my social media presence,” I task myself with something like, “post 3 times every week” or “figure out how to add music to your next reel.” Instead of giving myself a page count to write, I’ll give myself a time slot. “Crank out 100 pages” becomes “write from 9 to 11 with no interruptions.” “Get a big PR hit” becomes “make 10 contacts this week.” After years in the industry, what keeps you excited about writing? I stopped writing books and stories about ten years ago. Lots of upheaval in my personal life and a big tactical mistake with my last novel left me feeling empty. What drew me back and keeps me going these days is social media. Several years ago, I began posting mini essays about my life on Facebook and experienced the pleasure of instant readers and positive feedback. I wrote my latest book truly because people in my social media community, many of whom didn’t even know I’d was an author, kept asking me to write a book. Writing is usually such a solitary experience. But we write to be read, and social media makes connecting with readers easy and immediate, which keeps me excited. What’s the hardest storytelling lesson you’ve learned—perhaps a technique or perspective you initially resisted—and how did embracing it elevate your work? Whenever I shared even the roughest outline of my mother’s life, people’s invariable response was that her story would make a great book. That I should make it into great book. I resisted writing about her for several reasons. Big picture, I’m not much of a memoir fan. I find so much self-regard a little cringey. I also felt that too many memoirs relied on drama instead of great writing to carry their story forward. If I was going to take on my mother’s life, I wanted my craft to be good enough for her tale and I took my discomfort as evidence that it wasn’t. Then in my mid 30’s, I enrolled in an MFA program and had the good fortune to work with Bob Shacochis as my non-fiction mentor. When I told him about my made-for-memoir mother, he said, “So, we’re writing a book.” The “we” in his bold statement gave me the courage to try. Over our months working together, Bob often told me, “There can be no mother story without a daughter story.” His insistence that I write about myself not just as me but in my role as a daughter to a difficult mother taught me the importance of rendering relationships as a means to develop characters. In addition, by framing the task as writing a mother/daughter story, rather than a story about me and my mother, he helped me get the bit of distance I needed to see us both as characters in a tale, which gave me a little more freedom to work out my story on the page, rather than be a slave to memory.
When crafting a novel, how do you decide which themes or messages to weave in without making the story feel preachy or heavy-handed? Focus on your characters. Instead of imposing themes and messages upon them, give them experiences that demonstrate whatever it is you’re trying to convey. It’s all about “show, don’t tell.” Looking back on your career, what are you most proud of? That at 62, with a lot of rough road behind me, I’m still at it, still mostly hopeful and optimistic about the power of good writing to connect people. What advice would you give new writers chasing their first big break? Focus on your job, which is to write well and then write better. Sheepdog the publishing side of things, sure. Keep your eye on where it’s going, what it’s doing, but don’t chase anything too hard or you’ll just send it running. Watch for opportunities, trust that they will come and that you’ll be ready to run into an opening when it appears, Looking back, what’s one choice you made early in your career—about your writing, publishing, or mindset—that you credit for your longevity as an author? I’m quite sure that my childhood spent watching a bunch of self-important artists crash and burn in the hippie heyday of 1960s Hollywood biased me, but I’ve never viewed my writing as “art.” I write in an effort to connect with people, in the hope that I can be of use to other people. That’s what keeps me going. If you could leave one word of advice for future writers, what would it be? I can’t come up with a single word, but a single sentence would be: Remember that it is writing, not publishing, that makes you a writer.
 Laurel Saville is the author of a memoir, three novels, several books on design topics, as well as many articles, essays, short stories, and feature pieces. She is also a brand consultant working with a wide range of organizations to craft creative strategies and write marketing materials. She is a teacher of writing, branding, and dog behavior. Also, she is a trainer of dogs and their humans. Mostly the humans. Laurel is also a wanderer who loves to explore by traveling, hiking, reading, discussing, learning new skills, and finding quiet places to sit and ponder. You can find out more at: https://www.laurelsaville.com/  This post was compiled by Brandy Vallance, a literary agent with Barbara Bova Literary Agency, an award-winning author, and Executive Aide for Writing Day Workshops. Brandy is the winner of two national writing awards, one of which included a $20,000 prize. Her novel, THE COVERED DEEP, has been featured in USA Today & Writer’s Digest. WITHIN THE VEIL has been called “passionate and riveting” and Publisher’s Weekly encourages those who like sweeping Scottish sagas to dive in because “the journey is wonderful.” Brandy loves helping writers break the chains of fear and self-doubt. You can find out more at brandyvallance.com.  Pitch Agents at a Writers Conference in 2026:
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