First Draft Episode #212: Jen Wang
September 24, 2019
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Jen Wang, Eisner Award-winning author and illustrator of The Prince and the Dressmaker, In Real Life, and Koko Be Good stops by to talk about her new middle grade graphic novel, Stargazing.
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Jen Wang, Eisner Award-winning author and illustrator of The Prince and the Dressmaker, as well as In Real Life, and Koko Be Good. Jen stopped by to talk about her new middle grade graphic novel Stargazing. I loved what she had to say about putting yourself through comics college by starting and maintaining a web comic when she was still in high school, having professional peers, and how writing the scary thing is also writing the interesting thing. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: I like to start my podcast at the very beginning. So I'd like to hear about where you were born and raised.
Jen Wang: I'm from the Bay area so Berkeley, Oakland, and I moved here to LA about ten years ago. So yeah, I'm a born and raised California girl.
Sarah Enni: How was reading and writing a part of your growing up?
Jen Wang: I was just always really into it. My mom took us to the library a lot and we always had a lot of picture books around. And I liked to draw early on. So I think there was this attachment to visuals and stories, I think all that went hand in hand. And then as I got older I would read novels and YA books… for the time. I didn't even know what a YA book [was] until ten years ago. But yeah, I read a lot. And then in high school I really got into reading Manga, which led me to discover comics as a thing that I could combine both my drawing and my writing. Before that I was just doing them separately. Like I would write prose fiction and then on the side I would do drawings. I was imagining that it would be like an illustrated novel is what I'd be going for. And then at some point I started reading comics and I was like, "Oh, well I can actually do them like that. And then I can do more drawing."
Sarah Enni: And they work together. I'm interested in this, and as we go we'll touch back on this, but comics versus graphic novels. Were you reading graphic novels as well? To what extent do you see a distinction between the two? I'm interested in how that was an inspiration or not.
Jen Wang: I personally don't make a distinction between the two. I feel like graphic novels is a new industry term to define work that is bound in a volume that you can go get at a bookstore or library. But they're all like comics to me, just as a medium. So I still just say comics a lot, even though I might be referring to a graphic novel and not a strip in the newspaper.
Sarah Enni: Do you remember reading what we would call a graphic novel when you were a kid? Or was it mostly Manga and stuff?
Jen Wang: I don't think I really read anything that was Western oriented as far as comics go until... I mean, I was reading newspaper comics, and stuff like Calvin Hobbes (by Bill Watterson) and whatever. But I don't think I read what we think of as a graphic novel until later in high school. And that was only because I started going to actual comic bookstores. They had some in Berkeley and I would go and just see that there was stuff available. Cause otherwise this was before you could get anything at the library or even at a Barnes and Noble. I think they had comics, like mainstream superhero comics, but that wasn't really a world I was familiar with. So I wouldn't have picked up Spiderman or anything anyway. But I think it was very limited at the time. I didn't really know what to look for until other people told me, "Go to the comic bookstore and look up this or that."
Sarah Enni: Yeah and ask. They're so knowledgeable. But it is interesting to think about how the path of comics generally, and graphic volumes, have grown in the same time frame as YA has grown and become such a big category. They do seem to go hand-in-hand in my mind in some way. Maybe just because young people are less tied to format. So like, "Why wouldn't there be pictures in my books?"
Jen Wang: Right. And I think there's just so much more institutional support for that stuff. I do remember in high school, a couple of classes below me, they were reading Harry Potter. But even that seemed a little bit laughable at the time. But I think schools and libraries have just embraced both as a fairly legitimate, sophisticated form of reading for young people. And so I think that's changed a lot.
Sarah Enni: How did you feel when you were getting really into them as a kid? Did you feel like it was a guilty pleasure or did you feel like it was... I don't know, what'd you think?
Jen Wang: I don't know. I don't think I thought about it that much. I just knew I liked it and so I read them. I don't think I had that sense of whether this was good reading or bad reading. Because, to be honest, there was a period in middle school where I just didn't read. I think I just maybe ran out of stuff that I was interested in, or I didn't really know what to read next. I graduated from certain reading levels, but then I wasn't really all that interested in reading adult novels necessarily. I think I wasn't sure what I wanted to read. But then I discovered Manga and suddenly there was all this material that I could really get into.
Sarah Enni: What about drawing? Where was drawing as far as growing up and maybe trying to take it a bit more seriously? How did that go?
Jen Wang: I was always taking it sort of seriously. I just really liked doing it. And I figured that this was, in some ways, going to be part of the path I eventually take, just because I did it so much. And I thought I was going to work in animation because that's where people have real professional jobs combining drawing and storytelling. So I thought that that's where I was going.
And then I applied to Cal Arts, which is the main animation school in California, and I didn't get in. And that was this moment where I was like, "Well, maybe this is not meant to be. Maybe I'll just work on my own projects on the side, and it'll just always be a part of my life. But it doesn't have to be my job." Cause in high school I started doing a webcomic and that was kinda like my job. I took it very, very seriously. I had scheduled updates and had a little website that it was on and everything. I didn't want to attach a career to it too specifically cause there just wasn't really anything out there at the time. But I knew that I was just really involved in it.
Sarah Enni: Let's talk about the webcomic cause that's so interesting to me. I read a couple interviews where you talked about it a little bit, but I'd like to hear the story of what made you think of... well let's start with your interaction with webcomics. Do you remember how you discovered them? Or which ones you were a fan of?
Jen Wang: Yeah, so webcomics came up around the same time that I discovered them. So this was back in the year 2000 maybe? And I took a summer class for high school students at the local Academy of Art college. They would have classes for high school students in painting, film, any kind of art medium. And I took one that was comics. And I met a friend there who was really into Manga also, and so we bonded over that. She actually introduced me to webcomics. And after that I was like, "Oh wait, this is what I'm wanting to do, but I didn't know that you could just do it and put it online."
And so we had to do a short comic for the class. And I used that comic as a springboard for a longer story that I could tell. And I started putting my comic online. It was called Strings of Fate. I think if you search for it there's a tumbler out there that compiles all the available pages from it that are no longer really online. Cause once my old website expired, I just let it go. But it's still out there which is great cause sometimes I need it for reference for slideshow presentations and stuff. And I just Google and find the images on Tumblr and grab some.
Sarah Enni: What was the story about and how did you decide what you wanted to focus on for that first thing?
Jen Wang: The story was based on the whole Eastern Zodiac mythology like how you get the Zodiac animals. And it took place in contemporary times. And these were the Zodiac animals manifested as real sexy humans. It was like this fantasy drama, maybe thriller. And it was just really fun. I think it was just really indulgence. And the best part of the whole experience though, was meeting other webcomic artists.
Because everything before that was just me drawing at home with my arms shielding whatever I was working on. And putting stuff online was really the first time that anyone, other than my sister, had seen what I was doing. And the fact that there were other webcomic artists who were my age was really amazing.
I didn't know other artists in my life. So that ended up being maybe the most important part, because I learned so much from just having peers and...
Sarah Enni: Building a community.
Jen Wang: Yeah, building a community and so many of those people I'm still friends with is like the best part. And we're all in comics, which is amazing.
Sarah Enni: That first wave of web comics that had so many brilliant people in it. Or, I mean, for the first, second, third, whatever wave. I remember that being such a rich time to be online. We're the same age, so it was just like, "The internet was so new." It had so much cool weird stuff on it. I remember that really, really fondly too. I want to talk about this because I know this persisted, but I'd like to talk about how you figured out [the] nuts and bolts [of] your process for drawing. How to put it online. Cause I think, to some extent, it's a little bit of the process you still use today.
Jen Wang: Yeah, the process that I was figuring out back when I was working on the webcomic is almost ninety percent of what I do today. And I think when you start to work on something, you figure out what works for you. And everyone's gonna do it very differently. So I think a lot of it just stuck. I think the main difference is that now I actually script everything beforehand. And that was something that I did after I worked on In Real Life, which we'll talk about later. But before, yeah, I would sort of script beforehand where I would jot things down in a notebook. I would draw them. And I would just go through each page and ink and color and scan it.
So, I think some of that process has changed, but the way it feels when I'm drawing, the way I think about how to draw something, or how to scale, or compose a page, feels similar. And it's very hard to describe because I'm sure there's so many differences between then and now, but when I'm working on the pages, it still feels very similar. I tell people the webcomic was like my comics college. I learned everything from just doing that. And subsequent projects obviously. But that was where it really felt like you're getting the crash course and everything. And how to do everything.
Sarah Enni: Yeah! So I do think it's so interesting and worth discussing that you had this experience of not going to art school. So you just spoke about how not getting into school made you feel like, "Okay, maybe this isn't gonna be my job.” So then what did you focus on and how did you come back to getting back into it?
Jen Wang: It was a long journey, but I decided that the right thing to do would be to still go to school. So I went to San Francisco State University where I'd visited there, and it seemed like a nice environment. The first year I was in the film program because I thought, "Oh, they actually have a couple of animation classes. Maybe this is how I get back into what I was wanting to do before." But then I actually didn't really like the undergrad program that much. I think it was fine. I think I needed to be more physically active and productive in the process. And because there were so many students it was just all lectures.
I learned a lot from just becoming more of a film buff. But I wanted to do things. I think that's just my natural inclination. And so I felt like, "I don't know if this is really worth my time being a film major." And at the time I took a sociology class, or a couple, with this one professor that I really liked. And I thought, "This is actually really interesting and something I don't think I would be doing outside of school. So I'll just do this and I can work on whatever personal projects I have on the side." So I became a sociology major. And it was super great. I have no regrets.
It was maybe the most important thing I could have done for myself at the time, cause it took me outside of this myopic, "I'm a cartoonist. I'm an artist," sort of mentality. And got me thinking about just all sorts of issues that I do care about actually in the world, and in society, and people. And I think at the time I was going through a personal crisis of just like, "Well, what am I if I'm not going to be an artist?" Like, "Who am I outside of this identity that I've had my whole life?" So that was a period when I didn't draw very much. And I started to feel a little unsure as I got towards the end of school what I wanted. Like, "Well, what's my next move?"
I think everyone in my department was going to grad school and continuing their studies, and I just felt like, "I don't know how I fit in there." I just had a little bit of a crisis and then I actually started working on comics again around that time, just as a personal outlet. I had all these feelings and I didn't know how to articulate them to myself, or to anyone else. And I started working with this character that came up one day, and I think after that I decided, "Oh, well maybe one thing I can do while I'm trying to figure out what my next move in life is, is maybe I'll work on a book like a graphic novel." It was always something that I wanted to do. Like I never finished my webcomic
So I thought, "Maybe this is something I can do for myself. And then I can get that out of my system and be done with it. And maybe then I'll know what to do with my life." So my last semester of school I started working on this book that became my first book, Koko Be Good. I think even a long time after that, I wasn't sure what this path was going to be. Because it's like, "Well, I'm kind of doing art now, but I feel like maybe is that me regressing? Is that me just failing at this other path I could have taken in life?" But the longer I've been doing this, the more it's actually taking me back towards the path I would have hoped. Involving people, involving the outside world and society, and helping make communities better and things like that.
I think I've found my way back to that in this roundabout way, but on my own terms, and through art in a weird way. For a long time I thought those had to be separate, but I think now I know that they can be combined.
Sarah Enni: This is so interesting. Cause of course your work is dealing with sociologically interesting topics, right? And you are furthering narratives that are talking about empathy, and identity, and identity formation, and all that stuff. So I see sociology in it, of course! And also, I love that you had the chance to get out of super-focus-art-world because that can sometimes be so [pauses on in-drawn breath] writers do this too. If you go right from a creative writing program to an MFA and then you're just a writer, then it's almost like, "Well, what are you writing about?"
Jen Wang: I mean it's really easy because I think a lot of creative people are very driven. So it's easy to just stick with your one focus. And I'm like that. I'm super focused on one thing at a time. And I think it was helpful for me to just kind of step back a little bit and think about, "Well, what do I want to write about?" Like, "What do I care about?" You know?
Sarah Enni: Yeah. In some ways a really great point in life too to be like... you know you can work hard. That's not the problem. The question is like, "What is the scope of your experience? What do you want to explore?" And I think it's so important to talk about this period in your life because you obviously are now a professional graphic novelist, and an artist, and you didn't go to Cal Arts. Which is great to be able to tell people like, "You can..."
Jen Wang: Yeah! Actually, I like telling that too to students because I think I did, at the time, feel like, "If you don't get into this school you want, your life is over." And that it's going to be like, "You're never gonna be an artist." Or, "You're never gonna achieve what you wanted." But we just have different paths to what you want to do. Especially if maybe you can't afford a private art school. You can still be an artist. It's not over.
Sarah Enni: I love that. Do you mind just pitching the story of Koko Be Good?
Jen Wang: So Koko Be Good is pretty much all the feelings I had during that time. Which was that this character, Koko, is a very exaggerated, kind of loud, obnoxious character who suddenly decides that she wants to be a good person and try to make the world a better place. But she has no idea what that means. And so she just kinda goes through this whole journey of trying to figure that out, and failing, and just coming to terms with growing up. And what it means to actually be there for other people, and be yourself, but be a good friend.
So that was, in a nutshell, a lot of my feelings at the time. So I worked on that while I was trying to figure out... I had just random retail jobs you know? And then when I finished a draft, like a penciled version of the book, I actually knew an agent from working on an anthology a few years back when I was in school. It was like an anthology of a bunch of those web artists, web cartoonists, that I was friends with. We just decided to put something out. It was edited by Kazu Kibuishi, who is super famous now for doing the Amulet series, (Copper), and the Harry Potter covers. But at the time he was still just also a web cartoonist.
And so there was an anthology that came out called Flight. And it was really fun. It was the first time any of us had been published. And there was an agent who had helped out with finding a publisher, and she'd always said, "If anyone wants to work on their own books, any of you can contact me. I'm happy to represent you." (Judy Hansen who represents some of the top graphic artists and illustrators out there today). And so I didn't realize at the time how lucky I was.
Sarah Enni: That's huge!
Jen Wang: I had no idea what getting an agent meant. I just knew that, "Here's someone who could help me and who knows something about the book industry." So I took my pitch, or my draft, of Koko Be Good to her. And she shopped it around and found a publisher that was familiar with my work, First Second. They were looking for new works. They were a very new publisher at the time. So this may be only one or two years after they had just put out their first line of books so they were pretty open.
Sarah Enni: For anyone who's listening who isn't familiar with how you shop a project like that, you had an outline of the whole book with pencil drawings. And that's what your agent can take to publishers, to then say an editor, [who] will help you bring it all the way to fruition. Basically, I'm asking you, "How does it work with graphic novels?"
Jen Wang: Well that's how I did that book, Koko Be Good, at the time which I think when we pitched it must have been like 2008, 2009. So about ten years ago. I think it's probably pretty different now. I don't know if I would shop around a whole penciled book. I just didn't know how to do it at the time.
I thought, "Well, this is how writers, prose writers, pitch their books right?" You write a draft and you send it out. Now when I do it, it's very different. I pitch the concepts and I pitch outlines and sample art. I don't just start drawing. And I don't know how many people would've done it the way I did with Koko anyway. But there are people who still, I mean publishers if they see something they like, they'll buy it. So there are people who have webcomics that they pitch, stuff that they self-published.
So there's different ways to do it. I would maybe just [say] if you are able to find an agent, see what they suggest for what publishers are looking for now. And it's also probably different if you are pitching for the first time, versus someone like me. I'd worked with the same publisher for a bit, so maybe they don't need to see what my art looks like cause they already know. I think it depends on the situation.
Sarah Enni: It makes sense to me that a new artist, the position that you're in of saying like, "They need to see the "thing"." I know every publisher kind of breathes a sigh of relief when they can see that like, "You finished "thing". You can then work with us to publish "thing"."
Jen Wang: And actually, just going back to the whole coming up with your peers and why that's so important. I feel publishing changes so fast, that it's good to be with other people who are going through the same process that you are, at this time in history in publishing. Because you'll learn from each other what's going on now.
Talking to someone who was being published first twenty years ago, they're gonna have a very different experience with what the industry was like at the time. And what people were looking for at the time. So it's good to have older mentors who have been through this and who have valuable advice. But I think, for me personally, more important that you have peers who are at the same point that you are in your career. Cause I think you're going to be learning all the things that are happening right now at the same time. And you need each other to see if like, "Does this feel okay? Does this feel exploitive?"
Sarah Enni: Absolutely, no that's so huge. And what you're saying is so important, that's why unions exist. And thinking about that is like sharing information. But I love that your industry, in particular, is so on the cusp of creation and also technology. So there's some level of like, "Let's all decide what's normal now." Moving and changing and shifting. I can't imagine over even the last ten years, it's so different. Even from the outside I'm like, "What?" Everything's on tablets now, or whatever I guess, as opposed to I grew up watching or thinking about Bill Watterson and his...
Jen Wang: Yeah, I actually still draw on paper with pencil and ink, but that's because I learned how to do it that way back when I was doing comics in high school. I don't know. I think it's just whatever works for you.
Sarah Enni: So once you sold the book and you knew you were working with First Second, was there one editor you were working with or was there a few different people contributing? How does the editorial process work for that kind of project?
Jen Wang: I had one editor, Calista Brill (author in her own right of Tugboat Bill and the River Rescue, Cat Wishes, and Little Wing Learns to Fly), who I still work with and who's still my editor, which is great. And there was mainly just the editor and then the book designer. At the time it was Colleen AF Venable (also the author of Kiss Number 8, which was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and Mervin the Sloth is About to Do the Best Thing in the World while she was with First Second), and I think that was pretty much it. I didn't have a ton of people involved in the book. But I think First Second, at the time, was very, very small. They are an imprint of Macmillan. I think just having a smaller team was nice for me for a start. Now there's more people there. But it also feels like the company has grown a lot in the past ten years along with all the authors that have been around for that long.
Sarah Enni: How does, and I guess I'm interested because editing work that comes with art feels so intimidating to me because art is harder to change and adjust than deleting a paragraph in Word. So how does an editor get involved with story at that point? And how did you evolve and change the story? Or was it pretty much set? How did that go?
Jen Wang: For me, it's always been they want the book that you wrote, so it should feel like you and it should be your ideas. They haven't really skewed me in any particular way. I don't ever feel like I am working on a book that isn't mine. Mostly it's clarity. I think the editor's job is to make sure that what you are saying is coming through, that we're not confused about what your intentions are. And other than that, I think it's pretty much whatever I put out there is what they accept.
Sarah Enni: And speaking of that, you had this really funny story in an interview that I read with you, about your mom reading Koko when it came out. And that she found it a little... I think you were talking about the placement of text and stuff like that, that you learned a lot cause your mom was like, "I'm not following this."
Jen Wang: Yeah, I mean my mom's not someone who ever read comics, so people who aren't familiar with comics are always gonna have a harder time just being able to read it confidently. But I felt like I just hadn't thought that much about it. And I was putting word bubbles all over the place and doing stuff that I thought might look cool. And I think after that experience, I realized something that does matter to me, is whether someone who isn't familiar with the medium can really read it.
So my goal should be a sense of ease and clarity. And it shouldn't be too hard if I'm really thinking about it and considering what, like an older person or a much younger person, might be seeing when they look at the page. So after that I started paying more attention to what I'm doing. And even now, just giving enough space in the word bubble for the text so it doesn't feel claustrophobic, and little things like that, I think I started considering more.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Let's talk about how “IRL” came about and how that was also a furtherance of your style and how the books get made. Let's pitch “IR”L first.
Jen Wang: So “IRL”, In Real Life, is a book that is based on a short story by Cory Doctorow, who's one of the founders of BoingBoing and is also a YA author (author of Little Brother and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom). And so after I finished Koko, the book came out and it got some good reviews, but nobody really bought it. It just came and went. And I was like, "Okay, well I guess I'm going back to figuring out what I'm supposed to do now." And the publisher was like, "Hey, so we actually have this short story that we have the rights to with Cory. And Cory's a super busy guy, so he doesn't have time to write out a script version of this. And also he's not an artist. So we were looking for someone who also is both an artist and a writer who'd be willing to adapt it into graphic novel format." And just also adapt the story because it was written in, I think maybe 1999, and it's about video games.
Sarah Enni: It needs updating.
Jen Wang: So yeah, it needs an update. So I thought that would be an interesting challenge. I read the short story and I thought it was really interesting. And I just thought, "Well, okay. I guess this will be very different from anything I'd done before." But I thought it gave me enough space to play around that it could be fun. So I started working on In Real Life. The main thing was I had to start writing scripts because I was working with another author. Everyone had to read what I was doing. And because I was making all these changes and updates, we all had to be on the same page. So between the editor and Cory, I couldn't just scribble things down and say like, "Okay well, it'll probably be like this." I had to show what was actually happening.
So I started writing scripts, or I wrote an outline, and then from that wrote scripts. And then we did like, I don't know how many, there were so many drafts. There were like maybe ten drafts.
Sarah Enni: And when you say script, are you... I think we're all familiar with screenplays a little bit, but are you including in there any descriptions of the images, or was it just like, "Here's the chunks of story we want to tell?"
Jen Wang: It's something like a screenplay, but just fewer stage directions. I know some people who are comics writers, they'll have more detailed essentially stage directions. But because I've only written for myself to draw, I just mainly dialogue and then description roughly of what's happening. But it kind of looks like a screenplay or movie script. And yeah, we did many drafts. In the beginning, I had a very, very faithful adaptation of what the short story was. And then I realized it just was kind of lifeless because it was just such a straight adaptation. It just wasn't working.
And so the further we went, the further I diverted from the original, or I added more stuff. And then we just went back and forth. Cory would make little notes, maybe drop in some ideas. And I did my own research and so... I kind of missed this part... but the book, In Real Life, the basic story is this teenage girl gamer becomes involved in this massive multiplayer online RPG. Something like a World of Warcraft.
And she meets some friends who are part of a Guild. And they show her the underground economics of this video game world where there are richer players that can buy items, that are created assets within the game, with real money. And then basically they can just advance to different levels. You can almost cheat your way through the game. And then on the other side there are players whose job it was to create these assets. To basically do the grunt work basically. And you can purchase things from them. And a lot of these players tend to be people from other countries who aren't making as much money. And she ends up meeting one of these people who's also a teenager in China.
And this is all based on things that happen in real life. And so this is a reflection of how our reality informs even these fantasy video game worlds that we're still bound to the same limitations. And so it's just a really interesting sociological story. Once we got a script that we were pretty happy with, I drew it. And it was also my first YA book.
Sarah Enni: That's right, cause Koko was considered an adult.
Jen Wang: Yeah, cause I think the character, we never really established an age for the character, but she's definitely in her twenties. So In Real Life was the first book that was very formally YA. And I hadn't really thought about that much before. I didn't, again, I didn't really know what YA was and what it meant.
Sarah Enni: Neither did a lot of us.
Jen Wang: Yeah! Other than the fact that it's marketed younger. But yeah, it just opened up this whole other world once I had a YA book out.
Sarah Enni: The thing that really stuck out to me when I was looking at Koko, and IRL, and the screen grabs that you have on your website with them, was the difference in pallet. Cause IRL, of course it's a video game, so there's a lot of bright colors and that kind of thing. But you've continued to have a lot of bright colors with The Prince and the Dressmaker and Stargazing. But Koko is really very muted.
Jen Wang: Yeah, also Koko was done in watercolor, it's all in real media. And In Real Life I felt like, "Well I'm working on a different book." And I switched over to doing the coloring digital. So I still did the drawings on paper with pencil and ink, but after I inked them I would scan it, and it was my first book that I colored digitally.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that. And I love that you got to work with Cory Doctorow who's so prolific. What a cool experience. You're talking about having the YA book come out and having that open these doors. What was that world like? What were you exposed to?
Jen Wang: I think the fact that suddenly there were, I was interacting with readers who were younger, was really exciting. I'd never really thought about that part of this job before. But then I went to libraries, and I went to different YA book festivals, and I had never experienced any of that before. I didn't really know that that was a thing cause when I was a kid I never saw any authors. I didn't know about book festivals where authors were present. I just didn't know that there was any interaction and that that was possible.
So the fact that I would go to libraries and tell teenagers, "Hey, I do comics and it's something that you can do," was like really exciting, it was really fun. And I learned a lot about all the community efforts out there to encourage literacy to promote comics. And it wasn't like doing comics or writing books is like a solo hermit matter. I mean it is partially, but then I feel like at this point in my life, half of my career is just being out there engaging with people, and with kids, and students, and talking to them.
I had never thought that I would like that. I think I assumed that because I'm more introverted and that I'm not a public speaking type of person, that I wouldn't want to do [it]. But once I started doing it, I got through that initial hump of being afraid. I realized that I actually do really like talking to kids and just showing them what's possible.
Sarah Enni: We're gonna get to The Prince and the Dressmaker next and then Stargazing, I promise. And thank you for going through all of these details. Just cause I don't know, and I don't think all my listeners know, how the nuts and bolts of art works. But I'm curious, at this point - because this career is unusual - you're also freelancing other artworks also, right? What does, at that point, your career look like? And also had you moved to LA by this point?
Jen Wang: So when I was working on In Real Life I was already in LA. When I describe to people what the whole working professionally as a cartoonist was like, the comics is a portion of this income pie. And then gradually over time, as I did more of it, it became a larger part of that pie. But a lot of it was freelance. A lot of it was just illustration.
Sarah Enni: And what does that mean? Just cause I'm curious.
Jen Wang: Some of it's like editorial stuff. Some of it's for magazines or publications. I did a lot of children's book, like doing illustrations for middle grade novels, things like that. And some covers.
Sarah Enni: Sometimes in middle grade novels, sometimes in between the text there'll be something, or at the top of a chapter.
Jen Wang: Yeah, just like a little blurb of an image or something. Something that's not very complicated. But yeah, there's just all kinds of little just random jobs. I'd never had anything very consistent, but it would be like, "Oh, this author..." I did some illustrations for Tom Angleberger's books (including Tom Angleberger’s Fake Mustache.). And so, because I'd done one or two and they liked it, when he would do a new book, sometimes I would get on that train. So it was stuff like that, just building up clients. And it wasn't much. So for sure comics is not traditionally a very lucrative field. I was just kinda hanging in there for a really long time.
Sarah Enni: So let's talk about The Prince and the Dressmaker. First of all, do you mind pitching that project for us?
Jen Wang: The Prince and the Dressmaker is a YA graphic novel that's about a nineteenth century prince, Prince Sebastian, who secretly likes to wear dresses. And so there's a dressmaker hired to make these beautiful dresses. But it has to be a secret from the king and the queen and the whole kingdom. But it's a fairy tale fantasy. It's really fun. And I wanted to do something really positive.
Sarah Enni: And the prince and the dressmaker's relationship and how they interact and support each other is so great. So how did this project come about? How did you get the idea? And what made you think of it as a YA story?
Jen Wang: I felt pretty ready to pitch another original story after In Real Life came out. I felt a little more confident in just kinda, "I guess I'm in comics now." Like, "I'm here, so I may as well pitch some original work." And the story was a combination of a couple different ideas I've had for a while. I always wanted to do a story about an artist but not like an artist like me. I didn't want to do a story about a cartoonist, I wanted to do something that was maybe something I didn't know how to do that I thought was magical. And I always thought sewing and clothing was really cool. I would watch Project Runway and be like, "Wow, look at that. They're so amazing!"
Sarah Enni: And it seems like magic. It's really something I cannot imagine doing.
Jen Wang: Yeah, exactly. So I liked that idea of a character who's superpower basically was to make really cool outfits that would transform the person wearing the outfits. And for a while I was thinking in a very literal way, like in maybe a sci-fi fantasy kind of way. And then at some point I realized that the transformation could be more emotional. That it was about [how] the clothes can make you feel more like yourself.
And at the same time I always wanted to do something that was like a Disney movie, but a little more queer. Maybe something about gender identity. And I think the ideas just fell together. And the day that I kinda came up with the story randomly, I just thought like, "Oh yeah, this is it!" It's like there's a whole story written there already. Cause once you decide it's gonna be a fairy tale, you're thinking about prince and princesses and then you're imagining horse drawn carriages. And it just all fell together very cleanly.
Sarah Enni: In some ways it's one of those stories that's so beautifully simple that you're like, "Oh!" I had a friend come up with a book title that was so... Veronica Roth's new book of short stories is called The End and Other Beginnings (hear her First Draft interviews here and here).
Jen Wang: Huh? Why didn't I think of that?
Sarah Enni: And when she came up with that, we all looked at each other and we were like, "That has to exist, right?" Like, "That must already be a title." And it wasn't as far as we could find out. But it's like, "Oh, this has been waiting to be a story." At least that's how I felt about The Prince and the Dressmaker reading it. I was like, "This is so classic."
It's so a part of the kinds of stories that we tell over and over, but it's got such a delightful new twist to it. And it's so beautiful. And the movement of the clothing was so fun and I loved reading it so much. And so did a lot of other people. It got a lot of attention. And has been a really big deal for like a year. I feel like you've been on the road talking about it for a while now.
Jen Wang: Yeah. Yeah. I knew just from how I felt about it that like, "Well, it has to be something that other people will probably feel a connection to." But it's just hard to picture what that means. So it's been really nice that people have connected with it. I like that it is young people and old people. Yeah, it's been really, really wonderful. I still don't really know how to process that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well that's gonna be my question! I mean, just because you're still relatively early in your career, it's only your third book, and this is getting a lot of attention. I'm just wondering how... And I mean, you just got the Eisner for best writer, artist and best publication for teens. I got to get that plug in there! I think amongst many other awards, but that just happened. So that's a really big deal and it could mean a shift in your career and how people perceive your work. I'm just wondering how you're thinking about that? Or how that's maybe changed thoughts about going forward in your work at all?
Jen Wang: I mean it definitely has shifted so much just in the past year. And I think it was definitely a little scary in the beginning when the book first came out. There's a lot of eyeballs on you it feels like. But I think for me the best thing so far has just been, before the book came out, I already came to the sense of acceptance about where I was in my career and how I felt like I had tried my best. I had done everything that I could to have a comics career, which is not something I ever imagined myself having. So anything else beyond this point is a bonus and I don't have to feel pressured to be anything other than what feels natural to me.
Cause I think there's definitely pressure after a book comes out that is successful, that you have to follow it up with the right thing, or like, "What if you make a mistake and suddenly your career takes a downturn?" It feels like the next step is really important. And I think I was able to work through that because I already felt like, "It's okay." That there is not the sense of, "If I do the book that isn't going to be a great follow-up, that it's gonna be over." And I just tried to be happy for what's already happened.
And thinking back to that sort of myopic sense of self and being an artist that's like, "Well I can't hang everything on this book being successful or not." Or, my books in general like, "I have to live my life." And I've seen people who are super successful in their careers, also have trouble in their personal lives. Or they suddenly weren't able to take care of certain things. Or, you still have family that needs you. T
here's just so many aspects to life that I think it helped to see that and be aware of like, "I have to take care of myself and my own needs and what would make me happy first." I'm actually kinda glad. I'm thirty-five now and it took me this long to get to a point where I feel comfortable in my career, but I also don't feel maybe as anxious. Because if I were twenty-two when I had this really big book it's like, "I have so much more time ahead of me to make mistakes and feel differently about myself."
And at this point, I feel like I've been doing comics for a while, so I know what it means to me. Would I be okay if I had to step away and do something else for work, or for whatever reason? And I think the answer is yes. Because it doesn't mean that I'm not a cartoonist or an artist still, if I can't do it professionally as my career year-round. If it's something that I can only do a book every five years or ten years, I'm still an author. There are so many authors and artists out there who have that output and we don't really think any less of them. We're just so excited when there's a new book out or something.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh, if anything It's like, "Blaaah!" You lose your mind when someone comes back after five years.
Jen Wang: Exactly. Yeah.
Sarah Enni: I love that. It's also really great to be like you lowered the stakes for yourself. But let's get to Stargazing. I'm really excited to talk about that. First, why don't you pitch this book for us?
Jen Wang: Okay. So Stargazing is a contemporary middle grade novel, graphic novel, about Moon and Christine who are two Chinese American girls who are living in very contemporary Los Angeles vaguely San Gabriel Valley area.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, I had an idea of where it was.
Jen Wang: Yeah. And they are very different personality-wise, but they become really good friends when they work on this K-pop dance routine for their school talent show. And so it's a story about friendship, but it's also about the sort of tensions you have with people who are supposed to be, on paper, exactly like you. They come from a very specific community, they should be so much alike, but their families are very different, their personalities are very different. And then different events pop up in their life, which call their identities into question. So it's a shift from The Prince and the Dressmaker. But I hope it's a more intimate look at what your childhood friendships are like.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. When did this story idea come to you? Or how did you develop Stargazing?
Jen Wang: So I'd always, for a long time, wanted to do a story that was based on my experiences as a Chinese American growing up. And I was thinking a lot about what things felt very hard for me growing up that I haven't really read about in other children's books, or books about Asian-Americans, or children of color in America. And one thing I hadn't seen a lot of was just stories where multiple characters are from the same community and showing just how they're different, or individuals, and how that impacts how they interact with each other.
And that was something that I struggled a lot with when I was growing up. Because I feel like when you're a child of color in America, a lot of the times, either you are the only one in your school or in your community. Or you are one of many, many, many because you're a part of a little immigrant community or hub. And I was the latter, where growing up in Bay area, there were so many other Asian kids.
And even specifically Chinese American kids. And so there's this sense of, "Well, you're not totally white American," because that's a very different culture, especially if your parents are immigrants. So you're definitely part of a specific group. But at the same time, if you don't feel like you have a lot in common with the other kids who should be part of your demographic, how do you deal with that?
And I was, for whatever reason, I just felt a little off center from where the other Chinese American kids were at the time. My parents were a lot more easy going. They weren't as concerned about whether I got into a good school or not. And they were Buddhist and we were vegetarian.
There was a lot of little things that were just... it was hard for me to connect with some of the other Chinese kids I knew. And at the same time, I wasn't sure who I was supposed to connect with. So you have this sense of isolation and I wanted to talk about that. But I felt like it would be wrong for me to talk about it from the perspective of the kid who feels like an outsider. Because it would be too easy to judge the other kids who are part of maybe a larger community, or immigrant community, and might have similarities for very good reasons.
And so I thought, "What if, as this cathartic challenge, I would write from the perspective of the other side?" And just be really empathetic to how it would feel to actually not be the more outsider kid, but still feel that sense of alienation that I think a lot of kids do feel, just naturally, when you're trying to figure out who you are.
So I wrote the story more from Christine's perspective. Her family's a little more traditional as they would say. They're immigrants, but her parents expect her to go to a good school, be a good student, do well and succeed, and she has a lot of pressure on herself. And then she has this friend who, in her mind, gets to do whatever she wants. And it's very frustrating.
Sarah Enni: Right. Did you set out to have a cathartic experience or was that a happy circumstance of exploring this story?
Jen Wang: I think I did go into it wanting a cathartic experience. Cause I knew when I write a story about my experience as an Asian American, I'm going to have to write the one that feels hard for me. Otherwise, it just wouldn't be... like what's the point? And I knew that what was hard for me to talk about, was that sense of tension I had with other Asian American kids, or Chinese American kids specifically.
That's just something I didn't really want to talk about or know how to talk about. And I just felt like, I mean, writing is about catharsis and about getting those awkward feelings out there. So I felt if it feels a little scary to write about, then that's the thing that I should write about. And the thing that will keep me interested.
Sarah Enni: Right, right. That's advice that's given often, but it's just so simply true. I like that way of saying it though, "The scary thing is also the interesting thing."
Jen Wang: Yeah. If there's a reason it haunts you, and if it is haunting you, then at least you will still be thinking about it two years from now when you're trying to sludge through the actual making of it.
Sarah Enni: Yes! And odds are, I doubt that we are haunted by very specific ghosts. I think that probably if you feel that way about something, a lot of other people do too. We're pretty similar animals at the core of it. So if you have a strong feeling, or belief, or preoccupation, and you feel so strong and it feels so specific to you, odds are that's a ton of other people's perspective too, which is very cool. And the truism that keeps making me feel comforted as a writer like, "Just go and lean into what you think is weird and odds are that's so much more general than you think."
Jen Wang: Yes.
Sarah Enni: We were talking before we started, turned on the mics, about other ways that this book is personal for you. There is a lingering question about Moon's behavior. She changed to go to Christine's school and there are rumors about why she had to leave her school. And I'm not setting this up great, but do you want to talk about us traveling through and learning about Moon's background and getting a sense of what's going on with her? And then we kind of learn a bit more about what she's dealing with.
Jen Wang: Yeah. So she ends up moving into Christine's families... they have like an extra unit in the house where the grandparents lived. And it's because she has a single mom [and] they are struggling financially. There's this theme of Moon having a more difficult history background. Maybe some troubling behavior at school. But it's not very apparent because from Christine's point of view, she's so much fun. She's popular, people like her, and she's really confident.
So there's a lot of ways in which it feels like, "Oh, those are just rumors." And then gradually you find that a lot of things are true. That a lot of her confidence is masking this pain and things in her past. I wanted to show how we act when we do have trauma in our lives, and how it's not necessarily apparent to everyone around you because you might just be the kid who tells jokes and is having a great time, it seems like.
Sarah Enni: I'm seventy-five percent of the way through the book, I haven't finished yet, but was Moon's experience of externalizing trauma by acting out, was that something that you experienced as a kid?
Jen Wang: Not me. I feel like in a lot of ways being able to write the two characters, I was able to put a lot of myself in Christine. But with Moon I felt it just kinda made sense to me. Because I was thinking of a character who... so later on in the book you discover that she has a brain tumor. And it's not something that anybody knows about cause she keeps it to herself. And that's something that happened to me. So I had a brain tumor when I was six years old. And I didn't realize that that was a bad thing until I told my mom, and of course she freaked out that I was having these visual seizures. And a part of it was because I was so young, I just didn't have a concept of like, if your body is doing something abnormal that's bad.
But I was thinking of how it would be a good way to show a character who needs the fantasy to just feel like everything makes sense to her. That there's a reason why she might be a little weird. And she is not from here, so she's like this other worldly being. And that's why she has these visions, and these seizures. And how that's a way to tie in this feeling of alienation but make it be tied to reality and how we feel. And how when eventually she gets a surgery and the tumor's gone, she's actually sad because it's like, "Well, I guess that was just me this whole time."
And that's not how I felt about my own tumor. But because it felt so normal to me when it did happen to me I felt, "Well, it would be normal to a kid." You have no experience and no context.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, and if anything, having something like that... because that gives Moon the opportunity to create a narrative about her own life.
Jen Wang: Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Enni: And that's so fundamental to feeling okay, not only as a kid, but as a person ever. And she's kind of romantic about it. It's a beautiful world and story that she tells about herself. So that makes sense. I'm so interested in, if you don't mind me asking a little bit about that, it sounds like that was a distinctly visual experience, the way that you experienced your medical...?
Jen Wang: Yeah. So they were visual seizures and I would see visuals... it's like my vision would cut off and I would see just, I don’t know, like seahorses or something. I specifically remember seahorses. But I imagine maybe this is what it would be like if you were on drugs. So it's a little different than how I portray it in the book because she sees actual figures and people who maybe talk to her, but I felt like it would not be too far from what could happen.
And another big part of the tumor, which I can't even process what that would even mean, is that because it was a tumor that was right in the visual area of my brain, it's something that I think if we hadn't detected it quickly, maybe it would have affected my reading or how I see things. And I think... I just don't know. And that's a weird thing to think about because so much of my life is visual. My career is visual. But again, it happened when I was young enough that I don't have any emotional scars from it. Just cause it felt like it was a normal thing that a kid would go through at the time.
Sarah Enni: It is striking to me that it just happened to be so visually... To me, on the surface armchair psychologist, I'm like, "Oh, you have these incredible visual experiences as a young person and then proceeded to dedicate your life to visuals." That's a delightful connection. I like that. And also, I loved how her narrative about her own life was beautifully fitting into her allowing herself to fit in. When in many cases, Moon would have had the opportunity to be sullen, or upset, or feel really alienated, and instead she was like, "I'm special!"
Jen Wang: It's very comforting.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Yeah. It was really, it was such a sweet book. I am enjoying it so much. And it's middle grade now rather than YA. Did you know you wanted to go that young or was that a result of meeting a bunch of cool younger kids or...?
Jen Wang: I think I wanted to try doing a middle grade book. I think I was always scared, back before I was an author, I never would have imagined that I would do children's books. Even doing that first YA book, In Real Life, was a surprise. So I think as I was doing The Prince and the Dressmaker, I felt like, "Okay, well YA actually wasn't that hard. I kinda want to try middle grade just cause it's kinda scary and challenging." And I think I was afraid that it would mean more fart jokes, you know? That it would be more juvenile. But in reality when I had to think about like, "Well, what were my feelings when I was ten or eleven years old?"
It's so much more sophisticated and complicated, because you have all those feelings that you're gonna have for the rest of your life, but you don't have the experience of dealing with it yet. So everything's just so, like so many feels.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And not words for them. No barometer to measure them against. So everything is so at an eleven all the time.
Jen Wang: Exactly. And the fact that it's a contemporary story and not a fantasy or something where maybe I could just throw more fantastical things at it, it's like, "Well, how would this play out in reality?" And that was very challenging, but it was a good challenge. I think it was harder to write than The Prince and the Dressmaker which, in a way, is more complicated. There's a lot more plot twists, more characters. But I felt like with that one, I'm working through tropes that I'd grown up with and was familiar with from watching movies or reading books. And this felt like I had to examine myself in my life. And so it was harder. Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's such a good point. And there is the benefit of working within the world of tropes and even subverting tropes means that they lend an inherit arc and plot structure. So yeah, contemporary stories can be a real bear to figure out like, "What's the climax of a contemporary story? How do I keep tension when it's stuff that we all deal with every day?" And of course, the truth is our lives are endlessly interesting to us. So contemporary can be the same way, but it's hard from a storytelling point of view. Were you working on this while The Prince of the Dressmaker was coming out? How was the timing?
Jen Wang: Yeah, so there was actually a long gap between me finishing The Prince and the Dressmaker and it coming out. And I pitched Stargazing before The Prince and the Dressmaker came out. So by the time I started working on it, it was as The Prince and the Dressmaker was coming out. It was a lot of work, but I felt like, the publisher felt like they were excited about Stargazing and they thought, "If you can do it and it can come out maybe a year or so after The Prince and the Dressmaker, that'd be great". And I felt like, "I think I can do it."
So it was a lot of working on Stargazing during the week and then on the weekends I'd be out promoting The Prince and the Dressmaker and it was like that for many months. And it was a lot, but I got through it. And so I think moving forward, hopefully, I don't have to do that kind of dual, just constant work.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. what you're describing is seven days a week, for sure.
Jen Wang: Yeah. But I thought like, "Well maybe I'll do it once and see what it's like.
Sarah Enni: I mean it's so interesting to think about cause The Prince and the Dressmaker's coming out and in some ways your career is changing. And in some ways that means your life is changing while you also have this odd deadline project to get back to that is a little bit quieter, and a little bit introspective. So that's a lot of like two ends of the spectrum getting tugged at the same time.
Jen Wang: I think what was nice about Stargazing being so different from The Prince and the Dressmaker though, was I felt like the strength was in the story. The Prince and the Dressmaker I knew it had to be beautiful. I needed to spend a lot of time making these nice outfits and I felt like that was an important part of that book. And with Stargazing, I felt I just needed to get their expressions right, and make sure I got the feeling of maybe what this house looks like, or that sense of intimacy. But other than that, I felt like in a way certain things like pure indulgent beauty wasn't as important. So I could actually draw it in a more casual way.
Sarah Enni: Well some of, I mean for the listener sorry, but these drawings, Moon's drawings, are the frickin' cutest things in the world. I mean casual, but in a way that's so charming. I love that. And the micro expressions on her friends around the lunch table. I mean, all that stuff was just so spot on. But like you're saying, really different from a Baroque nineteenth century dressing room or something.
Jen Wang: It didn't need all the details. I just needed to get the main points across in the drawing.
Sarah Enni: So I just want to ask a little bit about going forward and then we'll wrap up with advice.
Jen Wang: Oh, and I do want to add, since we're talking about the art, this was also the first book I didn't color by myself. And that was part of how we were able to get the book done in time. I always wanted to work with my friend Lark Pien who also colored a bunch of Gene Luen's books. So American Born Chinese, Boxers and Saints and we've been friends for a long time. And from the beginning we were talking about Stargazing maybe having a different colorist and me being able to focus on three things instead of four things.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, just take away one of your many, many jobs.
Jen Wang: Yeah, just take away one thing. And I actually do enjoy coloring, but I felt like maybe it's good for my sanity to not have to also color the book after I'm done with everything else. So Lark Pien colored this book and she's so good. And it was actually really fun having someone whose sole job is to do the color because she was able to add a lot of things that I just would not have bothered. I just would've thought that this was a waste of my time.
But she would go in and make t-shirts and just different patterns on their clothes. And I thought those were all things I never would've thought of. So that was another fun part of having someone else work on the book. And she's also Chinese American. And we've talked a lot about these kinds of feelings and issues cause I think we felt the same growing up. It was nice to have someone to just go back and forth with on a book, where normally I'm the only person.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, right. You feel like someone's in the foxhole with you, or whatever that saying is? The trenches. Some kind of war analogy. And that's so cool. I love that the colors was also a Chinese American woman, because I just have to believe that there's ineffable subtleties that would just be possible when you're talking about a similar experience. An artist that can connect to your book so much, and so specifically, that wouldn't have necessarily been possible with just someone [else].
Jen Wang: Yeah, and there's stuff like, there's a scene in the book where Christine paints her toenails and her dad discovers it and it's like awkward cause he doesn't like that. And that didn't happen to me, but Lark was like, "Hey, this happened to me! Did this happen to you?" And I was like, "No, actually I just like imagined that this could happen." And it was fun that there were little moments like that where she did relate to it because something very similar had happened to her.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's amazing. How interesting. Oh my gosh, I love that. Well, I'm gonna ask for advice and then we'll wrap up with that. But I'd love to hear advice for someone who right now, given everything, is looking to break in to comics or graphic novels. What would your advice for them be?
Jen Wang: My advice is to just do it. Again I feel like my comics college, my comics education, was just me doing comics and figuring out how I like to do it. What tools I'm comfortable with and what I like to write about. So just going for it. Not being afraid to make little mistakes cause it's not gonna come out perfect the first time. A lot of people are very fixated on this idea of doing a graphic novel straight out of the gate. And a lot of times that's a lot. And it's okay to do short comics. Do something that's like two pages, five pages, ten pages and work your way up.
Sarah Enni: Build up.
Jen Wang: Yeah. To build up to something that's your grand space epic. Because you'll have those stories, but the more you think about how big and intimidating it is, the less likely you'll feel comfortable just even getting started.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Yay. Well, thank you so much. That's great advice and I really, really appreciate all your time today.
Jen Wang: Thank you so much. This was fun.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Jen. Follow her on Twitter @alooGhobi. I'm gonna spell that; A L O O G H O B I, on Twitter and on Instagram @Wangstagram. Definitely the best Instagram name out there, Wangstagram. Follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram), and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). For links to everything Jen and I talked about today, please check out the show notes, which are at FirstDraftPod.com.
Do you have any writing or creativity questions that you would like me and a guest to answer in an upcoming episode? If so, please leave a voicemail at the voicemail box I set up for the show. That phone number is 818-533-1998. I would really love to hear from you guys and get a sense of where you're at in your creative journey, writing or otherwise, and see if there's any tiny little morsels of wisdom that that I can offer you.
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Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you hallucinated seahorses for listening.
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