S2E14: Author Lauren Novak on mum rage, debut books + journalism instincts that shape her writing

Season 2: The Home SeasonThe second season of Creative Momentum with Meg, The Home Season, features interviews with Australian writers and artists where I explore how and why people do their creative work.Episode 14: Lauren Novak, AuthorLauren Novak is an award-winning journalist at The Advertiser in Adelaide and the debut author of Meltdown: Why Motherhood Makes Us Angry and What to Do About It, published by HarperCollins in 2026. Having spent more than two decades covering family violence, child safety and education, Lauren turned her professional skills inward when she found herself experiencing mum rage and couldn’t find a single book about it. What she built instead was part personal reckoning, part research project, part narrative journalism and all deeply readable. This is a conversation about what it takes to go from journalist to book author, and how the skills that serve in one world can both help and hinder in the other.We chat about:- How surveying 200 mothers from around the world became the foundation of Meltdown- How Lauren used her journalism training to structure a book- The writing routine she built around a four-year-old and a two-year-old- Why she had to unlearn the journalist’s habit of ‘finishing things nicely’- Why she thinks curiosity, not English skills, is the real key to writingWhether you are working on your first big non-fiction project, wondering how to translate professional writing skills into a book, or trying to find any time at all to write around small children, this episode will give you both practical grounding and genuine reassurance. Lauren is warm, funny and very honest about where she is in her creative life right now, including the parts that are not working yet.Connect with LaurenLauren on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/laurennovakwrites/)Website with survey links (https://laurennovak.com.au/)Meltdown (https://laurennovak.com.au/meltdown/)Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes and interviews: https://megdunley.substack.com/s/creative-momentum-with-meg-dunleyA special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp (https://yvonnemorton.bandcamp.com/) and Instagram.(https://www.instagram.com/yvonne.morton/)Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe