What does it really take to build a successful novel? 

Kate Broad discusses leaving her romance author career to write literary fiction and how her debut novel, Greenwich, required multiple drafts and rewrites. 

She shares what it's like to scrap early drafts, rebuild the story from the ground up, write complex characters that are hard to like, and what she tells herself when the writing feels hard. 

If you need a reminder that your first draft can become something magical, that struggling is just part of the work and process of bringing a novel to fruition, and that you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ll enjoy our conversation. 

Timestamps
 00:00 – Why Revision Is Where the Magic Happens
 00:19 – Welcome to Write It Scared
 01:29 – Meet Kate Road
 03:20 – Writing Greenwich and Starting Over
 05:03 – Themes of Wealth, Power, and Privilege
 07:34 – Crafting Complex, Unlikable Characters
 15:47 – How the Book Changed in Revision
 21:40 – Self-Doubt and Staying in the Work
 30:25 – Resilience and the Reality of the Writing Life
 39:43 – Final Reflections

Kate Broad holds a BA from Wellesley College and a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a Bronx Council on the Arts award winner for fiction, and her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, No Tokens, Electric Literature, LitHub, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Greenwich, was released in 2025 from St. Martin's Press and was named one of People Magazine's Best New Books, a Vanity Fair Summer Read, and an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best New Literature and Fiction. Originally from Massachusetts, she lives in the Bronx.  

GREENWICH - Out now from St. Martin's Press / Macmillan!

https://katebroad.com

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