Episode 60
A Cleaning Lady Coming Clean by Beth Uznis Johnson
Beth Johnson always had dreams of writing a novel, but it wasn’t until her baby son Alex was home sick one day that Beth decided: this day job is too much. "I should write a novel so I can stay home to write and take care of Alex." It was a wildly unrealistic plan that took going back to school, keeping the day job, two decades, and hundreds of rejection letters. But hey, what writer has it easy? And who cares if Alex is 23 years old now and lives in his apartment? Getting Coming Clean published was worth the wait and the work. It was that labor of love that taught both her sons to never give up.
Beth feels like she found herself in writing and has published short stories and essays in some of the most reputable literary journals. Coming Clean is the fourth novel she drafted, but the first to find a home with Regal House Publishing. She has high hopes for her other projects and, at 52, sees no reason not to believe maybe someday she’ll be able to lose the day job and make a living as a creative writer.
Until then, she has found meaningful work at the University of Chicago, writing fundraising materials for the UChicago Medicine Biological Sciences Division.
Beth’s writing journey has included a low-residency MFA program, writing conferences and workshops, and prioritizing continuing education. Building a writing community kept her going—summer workshops, the AWP Conference, and 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 Beth’s favorite project and the one she 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 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 customers. She makes major decisions, but most importantly, comes clean about a secret she’s been keeping since Terry’s death.
You can learn more on her website, bethujohnson.com, and find her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @buzjohn (which sounds like a drunk man but is actually a condensed version of Beth Uznis Johnson).
Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of Coming Clean at https://bookshop.org/a/90599/9781646034154
A little about today's host-
Kristi Leonard is a modern Renaissance woman deeply rooted in the book world. When she's not immersed in crafting novels, she's orchestrating writing retreats through her business, Writers in the Wild, or lending her voice to non-fiction audiobooks. She leads the Women’s Fiction Writers Association as the president of the board, and interviews her writer pals as one of the hosts of the Author Express Podcast. She will start querying her first book in 2024.
Beyond the realm of words, Kristi embraces the Florida sunshine by hiking with her writer-hiker group and leisurely walks on the beach. She and her husband juggle a couple side businesses and take turns sharing the couch with their goofy Golden-doodle, Maddie. Kristi enjoys travel adventures with her twin sister and living vicariously through her grown children. You can learn more about her and connect at: https://linktr.ee/kristileonard.
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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
Transcript
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Kristi Leonard [:Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kristi Leonard, owner and host of Writers in the Wild Retreats, nonfiction voiceover artist, and president of WFWA. I'm excited to share with you a little about today's guest.
Kristi Leonard [:Beth Uznis Johnson has published short fiction and essays in literary journals such as Story Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, and The Best American Essays. But her goal was always to publish a novel. After 12 years and 2 literary agents, her debut novel, Coming Clean, was published by the literary small press, Regal House Publishing, on January 9. Beth’s writing focuses on socioeconomic status and working-class lives. Hello, Beth. Welcome.
Beth Johnson [:Thank you so much for having me.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh my gosh. I'm so privileged to know you. We actually know each other through the Women's Fiction Writers Association, and I think we met in person 2 years ago, 3 years ago at one of the retreats.
Beth Johnson [:Yes. That was a great retreat. I met so many wonderful writers. It's a great way to build community.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah. Definitely. So, we always start with the same question. Tell me the most interesting thing about where you are from.
Beth Johnson [:Well, I am from Dearborn, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. And the thing about Dearborn, Michigan that many people know is that it is the home of Ford Motor Company. So, they have the world headquarters there. People get pretty angry if you don't drive an American car. But what I find most interesting is that Dearborn has the largest Arab American population in the whole United States. So, Ford opened its Rouge plant in the 1920s, and those jobs attracted people from Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. And then later, more people came from Iraq and Palestine, and Dearborn is home to the largest mosque in the United States, which is called the Islamic center of America.
Kristi Leonard [:Wow.
Beth Johnson [:And I just think it's really great. The city is very diverse, and its proof that there's a thriving Muslim American community. And I love the diversity and how different cultures are represented there. And, also, the Middle Eastern food scene in Dearborn is amazing. So, there's a lot of really great places. I recently discovered a Lebanese bakery with a delicious date filled cookie called, a maamoul, and I think that everybody needs to try one.
Kristi Leonard [:Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. I definitely would not have considered Michigan to be the most diverse place, certainly.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. It's a really great city, and, it's a nice example of how different communities, different cultures, different religions can all live together and have a great time and live in harmony.
Kristi Leonard [:I love that. That's so amazing. So, we're going to get to know you a little bit. What is something you wish you would have understood more deeply when you were 20 years old?
Beth Johnson [:When I was 20 years old, let's see, I was way more impatient than I am even now.
Kristi Leonard [:Aren't we all?
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. So, my writing journey, specifically, took a lot longer than I had expected it to and when I was 20, I would think that if I wanted to do something, I would be able to accomplish it quickly. And I think as we age, we just start to learn that to become an expert in something takes a lot of time and effort, and to get there isn't always easy. So, I would tell myself to slow my roll.
Kristi Leonard [:Slow my roll. I love that.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. Just step back and enjoy the ride because it does take a long time to get where you want to be.
Kristi Leonard [:It absolutely does. Do you think you've done the 10,000 hours of writing yet? Isn't that what they say? 10,000 hours to be an expert in something?
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. Probably. I feel like people don't want to take the time to become an expert in things anymore. We have the such an instantaneous gratification kind of society with technology and everything, but I think it really does take 10,000 hours to become an expert.
Kristi Leonard [:Definitely. Well, I know you had some experience. You got an MFA. Am I correct?
Beth Johnson [:Yes. I did. When I started to write, I drafted an entire novel and realized that I didn't really know how to write novels. So, I went back for my low residency MFA, which is a program that you can do remote, mostly remotely. I had a husband and like, little kids and a job. And so, that was kind of the first step in my writing journey, was really learning about craft and how to put the words on the page. And when I finished the program, another kind of patience example is that I thought that that would be the end and that, that would be my pathway to publication, but it actually took me 14 more years to publish a novel.
Kristi Leonard [:Wow.
Beth Johnson [:So, it was just the beginning for me.
Kristi Leonard [:I do hear that a lot when it comes to publishing that patience is definitely a virtue.
Beth Johnson [:It really is, and you have to believe in your own work and what you're trying to do with your work, no matter how many rejections you get. You know, at the end of the day, I can look back on it now and think, I believed in my work, and I didn't give up. And it was not easy getting here, but I finally did it, and it feels really great.
Kristi Leonard [:Well, when I pick up a book, I try not to read the summaries or you know, I'm much happier if I read a book if I don't know what the book is about. And sometimes you think you know what a book is going to be about because you can look at the cover, or you've heard people talk about it, whatever. But when I picked up your book and read it, I was actually surprised in a good way. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And for our listeners, how would you summarize your book in 1 sentence? I hope I warned you about this.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. So, Coming Clean is the story of a disgruntled cleaning lady in upstate New York who agrees to pose for her friend's provocative photography project in the houses she cleans.
Kristi Leonard [:It is so masterfully done, so creative. When I did Sheila's interview. I had a word. It was soulful because that was what I felt with hers. With yours, I feel like it is way deeper. It's so deep. Both of them are very layered. Yours is very layered. But in yours, for sure, the word that came to mind for me was deep.
Kristi Leonard [:Which of your characters do you most closely identify with?
Beth Johnson [:Oh, that's so interesting. Well, I really identify a ton with the protagonist, Dawn, who's a 22-year-old cleaning lady who's got lot on her mind, and she's not always very happy. But there was 1 character in the novel, Barb Turner, whose house, Dawn cleans on Mondays that I definitely see the most of myself in. She was kind of a busy, overworked mom who didn't have all the control in her life that she wanted. But the really fun part about the project was developing all the different houses that Dawn cleans in each day of the week, so.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah. That was clever. I liked the way that did that.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. I actually, when I started writing this novel, it was the first time that I wanted to think about structuring the book before I began writing it. When I came up with a cleaning lady concept, I thought, oh, well, they clean a different house every day of the week, so I'm going to start there and build from that starting place. So, I always knew there would be 5 different households that she was in, and it was great fun trying to imagine who lived there and what their houses were like and what kind of belongings they had.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah. Absolutely. So, what surprised you most about your writing career? Just switching a little bit to more of the career question.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. So, I think what surprised me the most is that it's ups and downs. And even when you have really great, you know, like, if you get a great accomplishment of publication, it feels wonderful, but it doesn't ever feel like you've actually made it and you're going to stay there, so I think it's just a continual process. And for me, I try to always just be open to learning new things about writing. Like, it's the only way to stay on top of your game and to keep improving on what you do. Because people will expect something great from you next if they like what you did the first time, and so it's just a growing process, I think.
Kristi Leonard [:How many books do you actually have under your belt? Because, obviously, this is the one that you published, and you said you had 2 agents. So, how did that kind of happen?
Beth Johnson [:So, Coming Clean was the 4th novel that I drafted. I have 2 more since. So, I've drafted 6 novels, and I have this one published. So, I always told myself that I kept writing throughout the process of looking for an agent, finding an agent, going out on submission. And then when things didn't work out, I continued to write and just kept going. And I always told myself that if I ever get somewhere, I'm going to have a lot of things ready to go, so I just tried to keep going back and revise. So, we'll see if that serves me well now that Coming Clean is out in the world.
Kristi Leonard [:I have actually heard that advice that you keep writing so that when you're ready and publishing that you can have something else in the works.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. That's what I've heard too, that it's always good to be thinking about your next project.
Kristi Leonard [:Absolutely. What would you want to tell the others who are dreaming about writing a book, maybe not even someone who knows about writing.
Beth Johnson [:Yeah. So, I mean, for me, when I started putting words on the page, I didn't know what I was doing. And, you know, I had some really embarrassing moments where I sent some queries out and got schooled by agents on just how poor my writing was at that time. And, I mean, everybody starts somewhere. That's what I always think back to is that everybody starts somewhere, and you just keep going. You just keep trying and learning and seeing what more you can do. And I really believe that if you have enough persistence, you can do almost anything.
Kristi Leonard [:Absolutely. Do you think that your book would be the same if you had written it at a different time in your career? The book that you published?
Beth Johnson [:It would definitely not be. So, I started writing Coming Clean 12 years ago.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh, wow.
Beth Johnson [:And I haven't really written much on it in about 3 or 4 years. So, it's been done for a while, and I know that I've learned a lot as a writer since I finished the novel. But I am also glad that it took a long time to find a home because over those years, I got a lot of editorial feedback that I had time to think about, and I did try to make the story stronger. So, I think what really changed over the years was that Dawn's character really deepened and grew. She didn't have as much of a back story. When I first started writing, I was so interested in, you know, the houses that she cleaned and all those people and she was just kind of the window into those lives. But gradually, I realized Dawn needed to have just as much, if not more of a story than the houses that she was cleaning in, so.
Kristi Leonard [:You would never know that if you were reading the book.
Beth Johnson [:If you're reading the overdraft, Dawn was a little less I mean, she's not always the most likable protagonist, but in the beginning, she was not very likable at all, which was problematic. So, I mean, I had to really think a lot about who she was and why she was doing the things that she was doing. And once I figured all of that out, I think it really finally came together. So, I mean, there was a reason it didn't get published back when I had an agent in 2016. It wasn't quite there yet.
Kristi Leonard [:Wow. So, where is the best place for folks to find you? We always want to know that.
Beth Johnson [:Probably the best place to find me is my website because I have links on there to my social media and everything. So, my writing name is Beth Uznis Johnson, and I wouldn't expect anyone to spell Uznis, so.
Kristi Leonard [:It'll be in the show notes.
Beth Johnson [:Yes. So, the email address is bethujohnson.com.
Kristi Leonard [:Awesome. Very good. So, we always end with the same question. What book or story inspires you the most?
Beth Johnson [:Oh, that's an easy one for me. So, when I finished with my MFA program, I applied to my 1st summer conference, and I was accepted at the Suwanee writers conference. It was very exciting, so I went to my public library to get some books from the instructors at Suwanee because I knew I had to choose who I would like to put as my 1st choice to work with. And I discovered Jill McCorkle, who has this story collection called Crash Diet. And I really love short stories because they're, like, nice digestible pieces of writing. Her story, Crash Diet, was so funny that I started laughing in the library, and then I, like, lost complete control and was, like, laughing so hard. I was doubled over and crying. I had left my way out of the library into my car the entire drive home and the whole rest of the afternoon.
Beth Johnson [:I mean, it is even the very first paragraph of the story you learn. Like, there's this character. She just got dumped by her husband. You know? It's going to be you're in for a real roller coaster of a story. I always return to it because it reminds me how much you can accomplish in your writing in just a few paragraphs if you have a great voice or, you know, you really know who your character is. So, I recommend everyone check out Jill McCorkle. She also writes novels, but I really do love her short stories a lot.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah. We'll make sure to put that in the show notes. That's awesome. Well, our time is up. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to be with us, and everybody needs to go out and find this book because it is a good one. You will enjoy it. Thanks for being here, Beth.
Beth Johnson [:Thank you so much for having me.
Kristi Leonard [:Thanks for joining us. We hope you take a second to give us stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at Author Express podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget. Keep it express, but keep it interesting.
