Brittany Means was born dead in Indiana, but now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and a Bachelor’s in English from Ball State University prior to that. Her debut memoir, Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways, was published in 2023. Her work has been featured in Shepherd, Zibby Mag, Her Campus, Diagram, Hippocampus Magazine, fields, and Metazen.
Kya Twitty (KT): What was the writing process like for your debut memoir, Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways? Was writing your story linear, as it is in the book, or did you find yourself jumping around in the timeline?
Brittany Means (BM): The first draft of Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways began as my graduate thesis, so I was working on a two-semester deadline. This turned out to be great for me. I’ve discovered I work best with structured external pressure. I started with the scenes, memories, and ideas that were loudest in my head. They were things that I most needed to get out and that were most vivid and fully formed. It felt like I had been carrying them and could finally put them down somewhere. From there, I built the connecting tissue so that it would be more linear. Then I worked with my agents to figure out what structure I wanted, where I should add present-day reflection, when to give people breaks from the narrative, etc. This was a crucial part of the process because they helped me find inconsistencies in the timeline and contradictions in my memories, which in turn helped me form ideas for reflecting on memory on the page.
KT: I understand “Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways” was the winner of the 2024 Indiana Authors Award in the debut category. How did it feel to be recognized by your community while doing what you love?
BM: It’s honestly one of the top highlights of my life. One of my worst habits is discounting my own achievements. When I look back at the work I’ve done, sometimes I feel like, big whoop, that was something past-me did, so it doesn’t count now. This is not a logical or healthy way to think, but alas. I’m working on it! Something that helps me is remembering that my work, as much as it is literally about me, isn’t just about me. I’ve gotten messages from people saying that my book helped them feel less alone. These messages mean the world to me, and they knock me out of my navel-gazing, self-loathing spirals. They make me think of the sad little kid out in the cornfield who used to cling to books like life rafts, and how much she needed stories to understand her own. And now, to be honored in my home state where that story was set, where I once felt so alien, where so many other young Hoosiers felt and feel so alone in their struggles and now maybe will feel less so, is amazing.
KT: As a memoirist, it seems you are no stranger to writing about the intimate details of life. How do you deal with family reading your work? Do you have any advice that you would give to your past self when handling this situation? In this same vein, your memoir explores many heavy topics from your childhood and adolescence. How do you take care of your mental health when working on a long-term piece such as this one?
BM: These are great questions! I think almost every young nonfiction writer worries about how to handle writing the stories that we share with other people. It’s a balance we have to find between telling our truth and honoring other people’s truth, boundaries, privacy, etc. That may look different for everyone. For me, I made it a primary goal to give everyone complexity. There are people I love who really hurt me, and when I wrote about those instances, I wanted to be honest about the depth of that pain, and I never wanted to do that in a way that flattened the person or shied away from the reality that they had their own complex lives leading up to, during, and after that interaction. That doesn’t have to mean that I was absolving or making excuses for anyone, just allowing them as much depth as I allow myself. And of course, I gave people the chance to read and ask for changes or omissions. I prepared myself for the people in my life to have big negative reactions, and some of them did. The most helpful thing was telling myself, and then making myself really absorb, that you cannot control how other people perceive you or your work. You can’t control other people’s reactions. All you can do is know you did your best, and so rather than wringing my hands and perseverating about how everyone would feel—which I also did a fair amount of—I should focus my energy on writing in a way where I could come away knowing I did my best. If I could say something to my younger self about this, I don’t think I’d have any particular advice because she made a plan and stuck with it. I would probably just tell her we made it through.
As for taking care of my mental health, this is also something I prepared for ahead of time. I knew that I was delving into really difficult material, so I made a plan with my therapist at the time to process what writing was bringing up in our sessions. I also prioritized taking care of myself over getting the writing done, meaning that if I had been writing for hours and was starting to feel excessively emotionally heavy or dissociative, even if I knew that I could stick with it and get some good writing done, I made myself get up and go do something else. I chose things that forced me to be present, like running, cooking, cleaning, doing puzzles, calling someone I loved, etc. It was still really hard. I don’t think there’s any kind of self-care plan that could have entirely kept me from feeling the impact of telling the story. But I think I had to get some things wrong to learn how to do it better, and I’m glad it went the way it did now that I’m on the other end. I encourage all writers to make a plan for taking care of yourself when writing.
KT: Since “Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways” is your debut memoir, how was the publication process different from other works being published, such as past essays and flash pieces? What did this process look like and how did you navigate it as an emerging author?
BM: If publishing essays and poetry is like making a tasty dessert for your friends to eat during a casual dinner, then publishing a book is like being on a competitive cooking show with Gordon Ramsay screaming at you for a whole season. I’m speculating here because I don’t actually watch cooking shows, but I love an analogy. Really though, it’s very different. For one, when you’re publishing in a magazine, you generally send in what you have and they either publish it as is, make their own edits, or send it back to you for an edit. Then it comes out some time later and that’s basically it! With a book, you get a draft as polished as you can, then you find an agent, and then maybe the agent (or agents in my case) has feedback, and then you revise and revise and revise, and then they submit to publishers, and then you wait for maybe months to hear back and develop a new emotion in response to your email notification tone, and then if someone wants your book you meet with editors, and then you accept an offer and edit the book with the editor, and then you edit it some more, and then you edit it some more, and then you edit it some more, and then you review the copyedit, and then you throw yourself on the ground and swear you’ll never go through this process again, and then you get up and edit some more, and then you review the proof, and then against all the evidence that this would never end, it’s over and the book comes out and then you get the first physical copy and you find a typo and you throw yourself to the ground once more, and then you realize as you’re lying there on the floor that you did it, you published a book, and then you go on book tour and people start asking you if you’re going to write another one, and you look straight into the camera and say, yes.
KT: It seems writing has been a love of yours for years, with your first piece being published by Metazen in 2013. What motivates you to keep writing? Have you experienced burn out, and if so, how do you remind yourself writing is a passion?
Writing has definitely been a great love of my life. I feel very fortunate that I grew up with storytellers, so I developed an early understanding of the joy and importance of storytelling. My mind formed around it, and then I started reading and fell in love with the idea that you can take all your brain mess and turn it into a structured thing on a page that other people can understand. To this day, when I read a really good poem or scene, I get a huge rush of inspiration. I keep writing because it feels good and natural. I wouldn’t say I’ve experienced writing burnout, but I do struggle sometimes to make myself sit down and do the work because I know how it consumes me. I’m not always a very disciplined person, so it daunts me occasionally to give up an entire day to follow the inspiration, even when it feels good and natural. I’m still trying to figure out that balance.
KT: At In Print last year, I learned that you worked on The Broken Plate as an undergrad. What do you remember from your time working on The Broken Plate? Has your Broken Plate experience helped you in your career?
Working on The Broken Plate was one of my favorite college experiences. I remember being so excited that I would actually get to help put an issue together. I remember making some great friends in that class, bonding over reading submissions and getting into near-fights debating our picks for publication. To this day, I vividly remember a story that I loved so much that didn’t make it into the magazine. I was the lead prose editor, and I remember miscounting the number of submissions we had and then realizing my mistake near the deadline and having to assign everyone a ton of reading. I felt like such a buffoon, but it was a great early experience for managing a team and handling a crisis. It has definitely helped me work on teams in my professional career and on other editorial teams. I am so delighted that The Broken Plate is still going strong.