Jennie Nash interviews author Meghan P. Browne about her journey from picture-book nonfiction to selling her first middle-grade novel, after participating in the 2022 Blueprint Challenge. Browne began the project in 2019, drafted it during her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, then used the Blueprint framework to “reverse engineer” the manuscript and discover it lacked plot; the inside outline helped her connect scene events to emotional meaning.

After tragedy and other commitments, she returned to revise intensively, resubmitted to her agent, and the novel later sold. Browne also describes submitting pages to the podcast’s First Page Lab and learning to absorb both critical and positive feedback.

Visit Meghan on her website: https://meghanpbrowne.com

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Join the Blueprint Summer Challenge

Starting a book? Stuck in a draft? Planning a revision?

The Blueprint Summer Challenge is designed to help you make meaningful progress on your manuscript this summer.

Over six weeks, beginning July 10, you’ll use the Blueprint—a proven framework for developing stronger books with greater clarity, purpose, and reader impact—to move your project forward, wherever you are in the process.

Whether you’re writing nonfiction, memoir, fiction, or another genre entirely, the goal is simple: spend six focused weeks making your book stronger.

Start with the Blueprint Course

We’re offering an all-new Blueprint course in Teachable, which includes:

* The full text of The Blueprint

* Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework

* Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

* Practical guidance you can use immediately

The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

Course enrollment: $19

👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

Join the Live Coaching Sessions

Paid podcast subscribers will also receive access to six weeks of live coaching sessions featuring me and a variety of Author Accelerator coaches.

Each session will focus on a specific Blueprint step and the challenges writers commonly encounter while developing, drafting, or revising their books. You’ll have opportunities to ask questions, learn from expert coaches, and watch hot-seat coaching sessions where writers will receive direct feedback on their work.

Some sessions will be led by me, while others will feature experienced Author Accelerator coaches with expertise across genres and stages of the writing process. We’ll hold these sessions at different times to accommodate different schedules, but we know for sure that Jennie will be doing coaching each Monday at 3:00 PST. The first one will be July 13. Other sessions will be slotted in soon.

Whether you’re starting a new project, trying to get unstuck, or preparing for revision, these live sessions will help you apply the Blueprint to your own book and make meaningful progress throughout the summer.

Become a paid subscriber for $12/month

Win a Blueprint Revision

Everyone who enrolls in the Blueprint Course will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast.

We’ll award one winner for every 100 course enrollments, so the more writers who join the Challenge, the more opportunities there are to win this Grand Prize

Ready for More Support?

As you progress, you’ll also have the opportunity to connect with a trained Blueprint coach for personalized guidance, feedback, and accountability. We are rolling out a new coach matching system that will give you an easy and intuitive way to find the coaches who are a great fit for your and your project.

There is no charge for this service and no obligation to work with the coaches we match you with – but what a great chance to connect with people who could help you write your best book!

Whether you need help clarifying your vision, solving a structural problem, or creating a plan for finishing your manuscript, a coach can help you take the next step.

Join us on July 10 and spend six weeks making your book stronger.

Learn All About the Summer Challenge

On July 6th at 9:00 am PT, Jennie will be hosting a live AMA to talk about the Blueprint and the summer challenge, and answer all your questions. We’ll send out an email reminder about this event.

Transcript

Jennie: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Jennie and the Blueprint Summer Challenge begins July 10th. I’d love for you to join us. If you’re starting a book, stuck in a draft, or preparing for a revision, this challenge was designed for you. Over six weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to learn the blueprint framework through our new blueprint course.

Over six weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to learn the blueprint framework in our new blueprint course. You can also participate in live coaching sessions with me and Author Accelerator coaches and see the blueprint applied to real books and real writing challenges. The course is just $19 and includes the full blueprint book, 14 video lessons, and coaching examples.

And remember, everyone who enrolls in the course for the blueprint challenge is automatically entered to win a blueprint revision with me and a live coaching session on the podcast. We’ll select one winner for every hundred enrollments. If you’ve been looking for a reason to recommit to your book this summer, this is your invitation.

Visit the link in the [00:01:00] show notes and join the Blueprint Summer Challenge today.

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #AMWriting Podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick

with it long enough to finish what matters most.

I’m so excited today to be talking to Meghan Brown, who has an incredible story connected to some of the things we’ve been doing here at the podcast, including the upcoming Blueprint Challenge.

So I’m gonna talk to Meghan about her journey to getting her first novel published and on its way to being on the shelf and in readers’ hands. So welcome, Meghan.

Meghan: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Jennie: This is such a fun story. I just, I just love it. So we heard about you and your book- Because we chose you to do one of [00:02:00] our First Page Lab readings where we look at the first pages of a novel and give feedback, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

But through, through that, we learned that you did our original Blueprint Challenge in the summer of 2022. So can you talk about where you were in your writing life, and why you decided to do that, and what the experience was like for you?

Meghan: Sure. I was so excited when y’all ran that challenge in 2022. I actually first started working on this project in 2019, which feels like a bazillion years ago because it was pre-pandemic, of course.

And I took a little class at a local place, it was virtual, but called The Writing Barn here in Austin that does a lot of great classes. It was a middle grade class. I had just gotten representation for some picture books I had been working on, and my agent and other people in the industry were telling me that my voice was very middle grade.

So I took this class, I wrote 20 pages. [00:03:00] I got nominated for a big award at our local SCBWI, um, conference that spring, and I actually used my very first advance money from my picture books to start at Vermont College of Fine Arts for my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, where I was hoping to learn how to write middle grade.

And through the two years that it took in that program, including being in that program during the pandemic, and working with Linda Urban and Anh Nha, who are both very, very incredible, um, authors in their own right, I was able to finish a first draft by the summer of 2021. And I basically, because of a lot of things, just didn’t really touch that work until I heard that you were running this challenge, and I was so excited to kind of dive back in and realize that I needed to kind of reverse engineer the whole project.

So I had a first draft, and I just [00:04:00] was looking to fix it.

Jennie: Amazing. So the... I just want you to be able to tell our listeners about your picture books because they’re- they’re so beautiful, and we’ll link to your website in the show notes so people can find you. It’s Meghan P. Browe, and it’s Browe with an E on the end.

Um, but just, just so we sort of know the vibe of what your work had been, uh, beforehand. Sure. Yeah.

Meghan: Um, well, thank you. They are very beautiful, and I did not illustrate any of them. Um, so the, the first one is called Indelible Ann. It’s...