Listen on
Apple Podcasts | Spotify
First Draft Episode #322: Jennifer Niven
September 9, 2021
Jennifer Niven is the Emmy Award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including YA novels All the Bright Places, Holding up the Universe, Breathless, and Take Me With You When You Go (with David Levithan).
Today's episode is brought to you by Edie In Between a YA contemporary fantasy from Laura Sibson. Edie's mom has died, but her ghost has never left. When a mysterious journal tumbles into Edi's life, she engages the help of friends to discover the source of a malevolent magic before it consumes her.
A modern day Practical Magic, Edi In Between delivers all the cozy magic that a budding young witch might just need right now. Grab Edi In Between by Laura Sibson now wherever books are sold.
Today's episode is brought to you by The Splendor by Breeana Shields out from Page Street Publishing now. The Splendor isn't just a glamorous hotel, it's a magical experience that gives its guests the fantasy fulfillment of their dreams. But when Juliette's sister Claire returns changed, Juliette books her own visit to discover what happened.
There she meets Henri an illusionist whose job is to provide Juliette with a tailored fantasy, but who realizes not only is he ill-equipped to make her dreams come true, he may be the cause of her heartache. Perfect for fans of Stephanie Garber's Caraval series, The Splendor by Breeana Shields is available now, wherever books are sold.
Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week, I'm talking to Jennifer Nivon, Emmy Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of 10 books, including YA novels All the Bright Places, Holding Up the Universe, Breathless, and co-authored with David Levithan her newest, Take Me With You When You Go.
I loved this conversation. I loved what Jennifer had to say about all the wisdom she gained from her mother, noted biographer Penelope Nivon, on finding her voice as a non-fiction writer and a screenwriter and finally as a novelist, and on the losses of a young love, of her legendary first literary agent, and of her mother and mentor that have marked Jennifer's journey as a creative.
If you enjoy First Draft, there are many ways you can support the show. First and foremost, subscribe to the podcast on whatever app you're listening now and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Ratings are amazing, but reviews get read in the end credits, so take an extra minute and I will read your review out loud at the end of an episode.
You can donate to First Draft directly on a one-time, or recurring basis, at First Draft's PayPal that's @paypal.me/FirstDraftPod. Every cent of those donations goes back into making the show possible.
Another great way to support is by checking out the website, the show notes for this, and every episode, are packed with great links to everything the guests and I talk about. And it's also a great way to support the show because First Draft Pod is an affiliate of bookshop.org. So if you buy a book through a link on FirstDraftPod.com, part of the purchase supports the show and it goes to independent bookstores too, all at no additional cost to you.
And while you're at the website, be sure to sign up for the First Draft newsletter so you don't miss any fun news, wink, wink. And go to the SHOP to check out the merch. I have a ton of fun stuff up there and every purchase helps to keep this show independent and free.
Okay. Now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Jennifer Nivon.
Sarah Enni: So, hi, Jennifer, how are you doing today?
Jennifer Niven: I'm doing great. How are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing well. I'm so excited to be talking this morning. We have a lot to cover. You have written many, many books and done a lot of really interesting things in your career as a writer, but I do want to start at the very beginning. So I'd love to hear about where you were born and raised.
Jennifer Niven: I was born in North Carolina but I was raised, for the most part, in Indiana. In a small town that I could not wait to escape from years later, as soon as I could. But then it's funny because that small town has figured into a lot of my fiction. It stayed with me.
Sarah Enni: That is definitely something I want to ask about. I also want to hear about how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you, especially since I know your mom has distinguished herself as a woman of letters, she was a biographer. I'd love to hear about how reading and writing was a part of your life growing up.
Jennifer Niven: For as long as I can remember, it was definitely a huge part of just my life. And I think as soon as I could pick up a book, and make sense of the words, I just was hooked. And I remember reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and I remember thinking like, "This is just amazing that you can go into this whole other world." And every book feels like wonderland in that way. It's just magic.
And both my parents were in education and my mom was an author, and they both had this huge love for reading, and so they instilled that in me. And my mom, as a writer, I think as soon as she figured out that I loved storytelling, and I loved creating, you know putting words together on paper, she really started encouraging that. And so we had writing time in my childhood routine.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing! Just to clarify the timeline your mom, Penelope Nivon (biographer and author of Carl Sandburg: A Biography and Carl Sandburg: Adventures of a Poet, Thornton Wilder: A Life, Steichen: A Biography, memoirist (Swimming Lessons: Life Lessons From the Pool, From Diving In to Treading Water) and co-author of James Earl Jones’s autobiography, Voices and Silences), the books that she published were later in her life, I think.
Jennifer Niven: That's right.
Sarah Enni: But was she always writing, regardless?
Jennifer Niven: Always writing, ever since she was growing up in a tiny town in North Carolina. And her parents, especially her father, really encouraged that. Just the way she encouraged the creativity and the imagination in me, he encouraged that in her. But it was a different time when she was growing up, and she became a wife, and a mother, and she taught, she always worked. But she really, really wanted to write and she didn't start doing that professionally until she was in her forties.
Sarah Enni: Which is very inspiring, actually.
Jennifer Niven: Yes, definitely.
Sarah Enni: There's a lot of ways that I think this is so interesting just because a lot of people, even people who grow up to become writers, I'll just speak for myself, when I was young I did not connect that books were human projects written by actual people.
So you sort of had this in-house example of, "Yeah, books happen because you sit down every day and as a person, just write them and rewrite them." I'm just so interested in how you think that shaped your approach to books, or literature. I mean, you just had this intimate understanding of the work that goes on behind them.
Jennifer Niven: I think for a long time, even though I knew I loved writing more than anything else, I also was terrified of doing it as a career because I could see just how demanding it could be and how unpredictable. And so I was lucky to be privy to a lot of what my mom was doing.
We would travel with her for research trips. I got to meet her literary agent when I was just a little girl. And that was all so inspiring. At the same time, I remember when I was going to college, I thought, "Well, I just want to be basically anything but a writer because it looks so hard and I know how exhausting it can be for my mom." But you know, I can't not write. So I very quickly learned that I had to go back to it.
Sarah Enni: Oh, so interesting. Okay, I do want to just ask about the sessions, the writing time you had when you were younger. What kinds of things were you writing or how were you expressing yourself as a kid?
Jennifer Niven: Oh my gosh. For some reason, my parents could never figure out, I loved writing prison mysteries.
[Both laugh]
Sarah Enni: Oh my god, that's so specific. I love that.
Jennifer Niven: And I don't know where that love came from Sarah, but I was fascinated. I still am, by historical stories, really old stories from old prisons. I was always really fascinated. I think that one of the things I always loved was mysteries and also stories like Judy Blume's. I remember reading Judy Blume for the first time and thinking, "Oh my God, I can actually see myself on the page." And that was just such a revelation.
My mom always encouraged me to write from the heart and if I had something I was going through that I couldn't quite process, to get it out on paper. So one of the first books I wrote was when I was in fourth grade, we moved from Maryland to Indiana, against my will as I always said. And I wrote a book called My Life in Indiana, or, I Will Never be Happy Again. And gave it to my parents, very pointedly. And that was really when I learned, also, that I didn't just have to write prison mysteries, I could also write real stories about things that I was going through.
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] I like graduating from prison mysteries in fourth grade.
Jennifer Niven: Yes.
Sarah Enni: Everything about that delights me. That is hilarious. But, I just love that it was so clear and respected that your writing was a way to be taken seriously and to express yourself, that's really a gift to have at such a young age.
Jennifer Niven: Absolutely. And I feel incredibly grateful for it. I also look back on it too, and I'm thinking it was so generous of my mother, both my parents were very encouraging of me. But I think also, as a very energetic only child, if she had any hope of getting any of her own writing done, she had to kind of figure that into my childhood routine.
So she would write at her desk and I would write at mine, and I look back at it now and I'm thinking, "Good for her!" She also got some writing time in that she needed.
Sarah Enni: That was very clever. I want to ask about your college years and what you decided to do professionally. Because, as you said, you did run from the creative writing, but you also stuck around in storytelling. I'd love to hear about just becoming a TV producer and how you decided to go down that path.
Jennifer Niven: I had gone to college with the idea that I would major in English and I would probably do some writing. And I did work for the college newspaper, but I also tried acting, and I tried my hand in other things as well, but nothing stuck like the writing.
So when I graduated from college, I actually applied to film school. I'd never written a film, but I had written a short, one-woman play about Zelda Fitzgerald, of all people. And that was the thing that I got accepted on, based on that. So I went to the American Film Institute to study screenwriting.
My mom always told me, she said, "There are a lot of great MFA programs and there are a lot of great creative writing teachers out there, but there are a lot of them that also do harm." And she really believed that. She said, "If you're going to study writing and you finally decide to do that," she said, "I would encourage you to take screenwriting. Because learning to write dialogue, learning to make every word count, learning to write visually. These are all things that can benefit you if you write books one day."
And so I actually went to AFI, American Film Institute, got my master's in screenwriting. And I came out of there looking for the next film idea. And I had to sustain myself, so I worked first at House of Blues in Los Angeles, interviewing all the musicians who came in and writing up articles for what they then called, the new media department, which was online.
And then I took a job at ABC.com as an associate producer for the website, which basically meant I hung out on TV sets and TV shows that I was assigned, and then did all the content for their prime time websites. So it was not something I'd ever expected to do, but it was really fun. And I think it taught me a lot about writing quickly, and writing on deadline, and collaborating and all of the things too that I had learned while I was in film school.
Sarah Enni: That's incredible. So I think you're encompassing something like five or six years of your life probably, but that is not only a literal masters in screenwriting, which I couldn't agree more that learning dialogue and visual thinking is so huge, but also, oh my gosh. Getting to interview musicians and then getting to hang out on film sets. To me, I'm just like, "Oh, you must have learned so much about how art is made."
I mean, obviously, talking to different artists, you learn so much by interviewing people and really getting into the behind-the-scenes about how their process works. That's so cool.
Jennifer Niven: It's fascinating. And whether it's a musician or a filmmaker, it's all the creative process. And it's all part of the same artistic process. And I just learned so much during that time. And I had always loved LA. I'd gone on a trip when I think I was 13 or something, to accompany my mom on a research trip. And I knew the minute I saw it, I was like, "I will come back here." And so, there I was far from my Indiana town, but loving every minute of it.
Sarah Enni: Amazing. So I would love to hear about what kinds of stories you were writing screenplays about? Or what kinds of movies were you hoping to go make?
Jennifer Niven: It was interesting, and this has always stuck with me. When I was in my film class, as screenwriters we had to be responsible for turning in, during our first year, one full-length screenplay. And we all took turns in terms of what screenplay we'd be working on, and giving feedback on, and critiquing.
And I will never forget being in that room with my fellow screenwriters, all of whom had written these very personal, raw, angst-filled stories. Some of them very hard to put on paper. And I had written a screenplay about a small Midwestern town that thought Disney was coming to build a theme park there. And they all got very excited. I mean, it would be perfect for The Hallmark Channel now, but I was enamored by it.
And I was already starting to think about my hometown and all the impact it had on me creatively. But I remember one of my fellow screenwriters said, "I worry that you aren't able to put yourself on paper the way you need to in order to make us feel what you want us to feel." And I was so devastated by that comment. But one reason it was devastating is because I believed it was probably true.
And it wasn't until years later with, really, All the Bright Places that I think I was able to prove to myself that I could do that. I know that that moment in film school was very profound for me and I'm grateful for it because I think it drove me to really find that, and be able to do that. And I did that with pieces of other books, but with All the Bright Places, it was really the first time I felt fully exposed. I'm a private person and it was a way to really share a lot of things that I hadn't really felt comfortable sharing, even with close people to me, before that book.
Sarah Enni: So I want to track a little bit of getting to All the Bright Places because you did a lot in between. So one quick thing I want to stop and just ask about is, I love that your mom had such great advice about studying writing, and such wise words about some writing programs being better for a creative soul than others.
I read an interview where you were talking about bits of advice that you live your life by. And some of them are quotes from great works or novelists, but also a lot from your mom. And you said one of your favorites was your mom said, "You can't freak out and write a book at the same time."
Jennifer Niven: [Laughing] Yes.
Sarah Enni: I'd love to just hear about that. That felt so practical and real.
Jennifer Niven: Oh my gosh, and it's so great cause it also pertains to life, right? So you can put that toward anything. You can't move houses and freak out at the same time. She always had this great way of giving me the wisdom I needed to hear, but also making me laugh at the same time. She was very deep and wise, but also had this great intuition about what I needed.
There always comes a point, I think, with any project where you just feel like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I absolutely have no idea. All the others that came before," if there are others that came before, "are obviously flukes. Because how did I even... I don't know how to go forward."
And so there's always that moment of self-doubt. And, I usually say to young authors when they're asking me, they say, "But I just doubt myself so much." I'm like, "Well, that means you're a writer." I mean, "An artist." Because I think you have to have a healthy dose of that as long as you're able to get through that as well.
And another thing that she said that I really loved was, "There are so many people in this world who will tell you no, so don't be one of them." And I think that's always really important, especially as you're just starting a project. You could have a lot of doubt as to where it's going, or your abilities to write it. Or, "Will anyone ever want to read it after it's done?" And I always remember that as well.
There's so many wonderful sayings that she had.
Sarah Enni: I think that one really struck out to me because I just finished a revision and it was total torture for weeks and weeks and weeks until it got to the point where it was like, "You can't. There is no time to freak out." So it just is like, "Wake up, do the work, eat, maybe sleep, and do it again." And it was like, "Oh, this is actually how it's gonna get done. I can't afford to freak out anymore." And then, sure enough, the work actually got done.
Jennifer Niven: Exactly, and It's kind of amazing, I think, lifting some of that pressure off of yourself. And one thing I do that I never used to do, is sometimes listen to music while I'm writing. I put on these headphones and I will listen to a playlist that I've made for the characters, or for the book, or just any sort of music that inspires me.
And I never used to be able to do that because the words distracted me. But now I find if I do that, it can block out a lot of that extra noise. And sometimes it can cut right to the heart of whatever I need to be writing.
Sarah Enni: Yes, that's definitely what I use music for, for sure. I'd love to hear about the genesis of your first book. Your first book is The Ice Master and it's a non-fiction book, totally different from what we've been talking about the whole time. It's not even a prison break mystery!
[Both laughing].
Jennifer Niven: It's not!
Sarah Enni: I'd love to just hear about how this came about.
Jennifer Niven: I was actually working at ABC. I'd been out of film school for about four years and I was still trying to decide what it was I wanted to write. And I was trying to record documentaries that sounded interesting, or read articles that sounded interesting, and see if I got any ideas from real life.
And I had recorded this documentary about a deadly Arctic expedition from 1913, and I was fascinated. I didn't watch it for the longest time and then I sat down and finally watched it. And I just was so captivated by the story about these people who went into the Arctic and only half of them survived.
The captain walked 700 miles for help. And there was an Inuit family that traveled with the ship and their two little girls were eight and five and they were there on the ice with all the men. It just all of it was so fascinating to me.
I started doing research because it's kind of my childhood love of being a detective and writing mystery stories, I love to do the research. So I was really doing that just to see what I could uncover. And there are all these first-hand resources from the expedition. Journals and letters and photographs.
And I thought, "God, this would make such a great film." And I said that to my mom. And she said, "It would or, you could write the book first and then maybe it could become a film later." And I thought, "Oh god, I've never written a book before."
But she quoted her literary agent to me who said to my mother, when she was saying a similar thing to me, "I found this story. I think it could be amazing." She met this agent because she was researching papers as a summer project as a volunteer at the Carl Sandburg house in North Carolina.
She said, "Oh, it would be wonderful to write a biography. Someone should do that." And she said, "Yes, Darlene, and I will represent you." And so my mom always reminds me of that. And she said that her agent said, "Every author has to write a first book." So I started thinking about it in that very simple but profound way and decided to see if anyone would be interested in it.
So I reached out to agents who had had success with books like John Krakauer's books (author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, Missoula, and more) and The Perfect Storm at the time.
I hadn't written anything and I heard back from them right away. And almost all of them were like, "Great. We want to read your book." And I was like, "Oh god, I have not written anything. I just wanted to see if someone would be interested."
So then that's when I really had to sit down, like you, and cut out the noise and go, "Okay, well, you're not gonna think about it. You're just gonna do it."
Sarah Enni: I want to just stick in on this, because this is an important point for listeners to know, is that for nonfiction you almost never write the book first.
Jennifer Niven: Right.
Sarah Enni: You have a proposal.
Jennifer Niven: That's right. So what I did was, at my mom's advice, I had researched these agents who had had success in the same genre I was writing in, and thinking about writing in. Because, as she said, "Chances are, if they are interested in that genre, they will probably be interested in another book in that genre. And they've clearly done well by it."
So using that philosophy, I reached out. My top choice for agents was the man who represented Jon Krakauer. And I had to very quickly write about 150 pages of the book that I felt really good about so I could give it to him to see if he would be interested in representing the book and me.
And I remember he said, "Why are you writing it as a novel?" And I said, "I don't know. I hadn't thought about writing in any other way." And he said, "With all these first-hand resources, you really should write it as non-fiction and I'll represent you." And we sold it by proposal, like a 66 page proposal, six months later. So it was all very fast.
Sarah Enni: That's incredible. I didn't realize that you had started writing it as a novel at first.
Jennifer Niven: I had, and it was interesting because by then I had started reading some of the journals and the letters, so I really didn't make up that much. And when he said, "How much of this is fictitious?" And I said, "Probably 3%." It was like, "Okay, you need to write it as non-fiction." So I was glad that I got that advice.
Sarah Enni: I am also struck by, you know, you just mentioned that you went on a lot of research trips with your mom, and your mom was volunteering. So obviously you had a lot of reference points for what it meant to do actual research with documents. That's intimidating, I think, to a lot of people. But it seems like you were really primed to actually get in there and do this gum-shoe work.
Jennifer Niven: Exactly. I had grown up with her traveling to different places. She started working on her first book, in terms of just doing an oral history and working with the papers, when I was about 12 or 13. So I was able to accompany her a lot of the times and to help her, to work as her assistant. And to see how she went into archives, and the white gloves and the pencil, and see how she handled these papers and see how she organized the papers.
Like at the Carl Sandburg house (three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet for Cornhuskers and Complete Poems, and biographer for his four-book series, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years). When we first went there, my grandmother had taken us there during the summer, and the papers were everywhere.
They were under the bed. They were just lying on surfaces around the house. They weren't at all organized or protected. And mom was looking for a project that summer and she said, "I'd love to volunteer." And that led to her first book.
So you never know. I always say too, like, "You never know where an idea like that is going to lead you." But following it through. Not all of them turn out to be books, but they can turn out to be something wonderful, and inevitably they'll lead you towards something else. So it was really a great way to cut my teeth on that kind of behind-the-scenes process.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. What was it like to find a non-fiction voice? I think people don't necessarily consider non-fiction as having a voice, but of course it does, and all historians are bringing themselves to writing history. So I just would love to hear about how you thought about that and what it was like to piece the story together.
Jennifer Niven: I wanted to make sure, right off the bat, that it didn't feel like a history book, like something you would have to study in school with a lot of dates thrown at you. I wanted it to feel like a story that was unfolding.
Also, my mom and I were always very proud of the fact that we never made anything up because I think there are some non-fiction works, biographies, that do take a little liberty here and there. And we prided ourselves on not doing that.
And so it was a bit like walking a tight rope at first, because you have to find that narrative voice, you have to figure out where you fit in the story. Because even though you aren't on the page, you still have to have this empathy and understanding of the characters who are actually real people and of the events that transpired.
And I had reacted so strongly to that story, because it's ultimately a story about these people who never anticipated something like this happening, going into this very extreme situation, and suddenly being faced with life and death. And some of the ones that you thought would be very heroic weren't and vice versa. So I think it helped that I was so passionate about it. I've always said, "Write the book you want to read, because that really keeps you invested."
So I think that was part of it in finding my voice was just being that passionate and that committed to the subject. And really, after a while, I also really fell in love with the characters and I felt very protective of them and they were very real people to me.
Sarah Enni: It was a big swing for you. This is a total career shift from what you'd been doing. I mean, you were still writing, but you're really focused on something different. What was it like to set out to write The Ice Master? Do I have it right, that you quit your job to totally focus on it full-time?
Jennifer Niven: I did. No one at ABC knew that I was working on anything behind-the-scenes. And so, I will never forget on a Friday, it actually went to auction, which was just mind-blowing. And my agent was calling me with updates at my desk at ABC.
And that Monday I went in and handed in my two-weeks-notice. And I remember my boss kind of like, "Oh my god, why, why are you leaving?" And I said, "Well, cause I sold a book." [Chuckles]. But then, of course, the hard work began.
But yes, I was working there when that transpired. But before that, I'm making it sound very easy, but the thing is I was working 65, 70 hours a week. And then I would go home, and with what time I had left, I would write and write and write and write that draft that I was going to send to the agent. And I would sometimes get no sleep. And I was working every minute I could on that to get that ready to send to him, to try to get the agent.
Sarah Enni: The Ice Master was really well received, I think it was critically lauded. And now you're in this new career, new phase of life. What were you thinking at that time? Were you like, "Oh, this is it. I'll write non-fiction for the rest of my days." Where was your head at that time?
Jennifer Niven: It was definitely there. And I thought "I love it. I love doing non-fiction. I love writing books about real life people who are very different, but who have to come together for a common cause." And my second book was Ada Blackjack, which I found from the first one. Because one of the men from the first book went back eight years later on this other failed expedition.
So when I was researching that one, I went down this rabbit hole of researching this other one. And I had to focus and say, "I'll look at that later." So then I had Ada very quickly after that. And then I couldn't find another non-fiction book I felt really strongly about, in the same way that I had felt about those two.
And I remember saying to Will, my editor, Will, "I think I want to try fiction."
Because there's this idea that I had, when I was in film school, my short thesis film was based on a short story of my mother's. It was called Velva Jean Learns to Drive. I've always wanted to develop it into something longer than a short film and maybe make it into a novel.
And he was like, "I think that's great, but I'd like us to find the next non-fiction book." And I really, really tried, but nothing. The story just didn't present itself the way that I needed it to. There was no story I really wanted to read the way I wanted to read the first two.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's tough.
Jennifer Niven: It is, and so I made the move. And this is the way I've kind of always lived my life in terms of, I'm practical, but I'm also impetuous. And also I have to follow what it is that I'm passionate about doing, what's burning in me to do.
So I think on the surface, a lot of people were advising me against making a move from non-fiction to fiction. Because, "It's just so bad for your career, and you need to stay in one genre, and you have to build your brand," and all of those things. For me, it was just following the story that I was burning to write at that moment.
Sarah Enni: I mean, it takes so much passion, and time, and investment, and life to write a book.
Jennifer Niven: Exactly, you have to spend a lot of time with the project, as you know, so you have to really be invested.
Sarah Enni: Otherwise it would just be torture.
Jennifer Niven: Yes.
Sarah Enni: I'm so interested in the fact that the Velva Jean began with a short story that your mom wrote. Can you kind of give us a little bit of the origin story of that?
Jennifer Niven: So my mom wrote a novel, a compilation of short stories, about the small North Carolina town that she grew up in. And they were all loosely based on real instances, events, or people. And there was a man in her town who had a metal plate in his head that had been put there after, I guess, World War II. Because he had to go to the hospital repeatedly for checkups, his daughter had to teach herself to drive to take him there. So that was the original short story.
And when I was looking for my thesis film for AFI, I had read a lot of these short stories of my mother's and I'd just fallen in love with that one in particular. And so she sold the rights to me for a dollar and we made the short film and it actually won an Emmy, like a student Emmy, which was exciting. And I just loved the pure heart of the story.
A lot of my film school comrades were making these very avant-garde films, very artistic and beautiful to look at, but made no sense whatsoever. And mine was just a simple story about a woman who has to teach herself to drive in 1940's North Carolina and in doing so, learns that she can go anywhere.
And so I really wanted to do something more with that. And so I started thinking more about Velva Jean and going back to that because I was kind of haunted by her. And I always knew I wanted to do something, I just didn't know when.
Sarah Enni: So there's four books in the Velva Jean universe. What was it like to take the short story, this germ of an idea that you'd already expanded into a screenplay, and transition into a whole other novel?
It's just so interesting, too, that the seed of it is this thing that your mom wrote. I'm just so fascinated by the development of the story.
Jennifer Niven: Well, it was interesting too because so few things actually go from being a movie, even though it was a short film, to then being a book, and to come from a short story. I felt like I always knew who Velva Jean was. I related a lot to her, even though she was from a completely different time.
And when I was making the switch from writing non-fiction, I felt like I had that down. I knew how to work with multiple journals, and first-hand resources, and to organize those and then to know when I was ready to write, to do the outlining.
So I started doing that with Velva Jean. I did a lot of research because the time period I wanted to start in, I knew the book would start in 1933 and then move up through the series till around 1945. And so I did a lot of research into the time. I was organizing and I was doing all the things I did for the non-fiction.
And my mom and I were talking on the phone and she said, "So how's it going with the novel?" And I said, "Oh, it's great." I said, "I've got it outlined. I know exactly what I'm doing." And she was like, "Hmm. Mm-hm." [Chuckles].
And then about a week later, we were talking about it again and she said, "So how's it going?" And I said, "It's awful. It's awful. I've had to throw away the outline. I have no idea what the characters are doing. Everyone's going off in their own direction they're doing whatever they want to. And I just don't know what I'm doing." And she said, "Welcome to fiction."
And I think it was then that I realized it's a totally different animal. It really is. And just when I think I crack writing a novel, the next one comes along and it teaches me that I don't know anything about writing a novel. And that it wants to be written in a completely different way from the one that came before.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, oh my gosh. I mean, I love that you kind of gave yourself baby steps into full your-world fiction, because you're writing historical fiction. Velva Jean is all historical fiction, so you do get the guardrails of research.
Jennifer Niven: Yes, yes, exactly.
Sarah Enni: That you can fall back on. But I'd love to hear about what it was like to be in a series. I mean, four books is no joke. That's many years of your life. And returning to these historical time periods and finding new ways to engage. By the end, spoilers - it's the title of the fourth book, but like Velva Jean is a war hero and she then becomes a movie star. You got to do a lot through the lens of one character over time.
Jennifer Niven: Yes, exactly. And after I finished writing this series, as much as I loved writing her voice, I just was like, "I'm never writing another series." Because after the first one comes out, then you have to write the second one. You're still promoting the first one, but now you're writing the second one. And when the third one comes out, you're editing the second one, still touring for the first one, and now you're writing the third one and then you're researching the fourth one. And so it was just like writing four books at once, almost, throughout the whole thing. And that was exhausting.
And also, just practically speaking, I come from non-fiction. I come from two books that got a lot of attention and did really well. And non-fiction just typically was paying more than fiction. It was kind of like starting over.
I remember going to huge events for The Ice Master and Ada. And then I remember for the second Velva Jean sitting at this little table at Barnes & Noble where everyone kept coming up and asking me where the bathroom was [chuckles], and just feeling so humbled.
I remember my mom saying, "Every book has a different life and a different experience." And I never would've changed it though. As tiring as writing a series could be, as challenging as it could be, as different the experience was from the first two in the nonfiction, I needed to write it for my heart. And I loved the character. I loved the other characters and I loved writing the stories.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about shifting from non-fiction and then historical fiction, to young adult. And as you say, coming to the place where you felt like you could be, maybe, your most vulnerable self in All the Bright Places.
But a part of that that I think is probably a huge part of it, and you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but I know your literary agent passed away around this time.
Sarah Enni: I'm so sorry. That's so awful. That's a really hard thing to go through when your mentor and someone who's caretaking for your career is not there anymore. And of course, a friend.
I'd love to hear you speak to that. And I also, in a more practical perspective on this question, what did that mean for you? That puts you in a place of having to really make decisions about your career.
Jennifer Niven: That was one of the most profound times of my life. And it all happened so quickly. John Ware was my original agent and he was this legend. He was so old-school. He would only write on typewriter, he begrudgingly had a computer. But he didn't have an assistant, he didn't have a team. He was it. He was the agency.
And he was very well-respected and he was kind of curmudgeonly, but you know, affectionately so. And he always had my back, and he was just such a wonderful cheerleader. And he always believed, too, in the fact that I should write what I was burning to write, not what price tags told me to write, or what money told me to write, or the industry told me to write.
And so he died very suddenly and unexpectedly. And when he did, the agency went away. And we started reaching out to each other, his clients and I, just to see if anyone knew anything. And then discovered that he had caught pneumonia, and he'd had leukemia that he should have recovered from, and the pneumonia... just he was gone.
I remember it was the summer of 2013. I had just finished the last draft, or was just finishing the last draft of American Blonde, which is the last in the Velva Jean series. I was so burned out. I was anxious to have some time off and just not think about writing. And then John died. All of a sudden, as you said, your mentor, your friend, your rock, he was my champion, died.
And then I had to find a new agent and I had to think about what was gonna come next and what I wanted to write next. Because everyone had that same question, no matter what agent I talked to, they were all saying, "It's great you have your backlist, but what are you doing next?"
So I kept going back to this conversation John and I had the last time I saw him in person. We'd had dinner in New York and he said, "Kid, whatever you write next, I want you to write it with your whole heart. Even if it terrifies you and it's gonna be big."
And he just kept saying it over and over and over again. To the point that, as we left the restaurant, he was walking backwards down this quiet street on the Upper East Side with his hat and his briefcase, and he just said it one more time and just disappeared into the night. And that was the last time I saw him.
So I was thinking what that would be. And I knew what the story would be. And it was a story of a boy I loved years ago who died of suicide. And it's something I'd always wanted to write about. I didn't know if I could, cause it felt so personal and raw, but I thought, "You know what? I love young adult. Ever since Judy Blume, I've always wanted to write young adult. Let me see if I can write that story."
And as I was working on that and I gave the first fifty pages to agents I remember Will Schwalbe (author of The End of Your Life Book Club and Books For Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life, and co-author of Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better with Dave Shipley), my wonderful mentor and first editor said, "I have someone I want to send you to. A young adult agent who I think would be great."
He told this agent about me and the agent said, "I'm gonna stop you right there. The fact that she's written in all these different genres, and now she's started another genre, that is career suicide. I won't get near anyone like that. And I don't think anyone else will either."
I was so devastated cause I was like, "That's it? What have I done to my career?" Like, "How have I done this?" And I remember my mom saying, "That's one person. That's just one person. And you only need one person who will believe in you, and what you've done in your stories, and what you want to do next."
And then I found Kerry Sparks at Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. And she's just a pistol. She's like a ball of fire. And she is every bit the agent that John was, but in a different way. And we had this wonderful friendship, she's also my mentor. And I just feel so grateful to have worked with these two extraordinary people.
Sarah Enni: Thank you for talking through that cause I know it’s kind of a wild thing. But people deal with having to switch agents for many, many different reasons. So I do think it's something worth talking about cause it's very complicated. The moment when you realize that you have to find a new agent, and you're at the end of a series and you want to try something new, it's another like crucible moment, I think.
Or, you tell me, this is my impression from hearing you talk about this, where you can't let the doubts affect you. You just had to do something, in this moment, that enabled something to come through that may not have otherwise.
Jennifer Niven: I think part of that is that fire that you have as an artist. Whether it comes from like, "Oh, I'll show you. I can write this anyway." Or, "Don't tell me no, cause then I'll do it." Or wherever it comes from. Just the need to express yourself and the need to tell this certain story.
My mom always said, "To be a writer, you have to have the soul of an angel and the hide of an Armadillo." And I think that's also very true. I don't do as well with the hide of the Armadillo part. I have to always remind myself to have that. But I think that was all a part of it.
And when I finally was able to write and just shut away everything, I wrote the book very quickly. I wrote it in about six weeks. Being able to shut out the noise, to not have someone watching over your shoulder as you write. I think all of that is very important and it's not easy to do all the time, but when you can, I think that's crucial.
Sarah Enni: Because, of course, this is the moment that as you say, All the Bright Places came from a personal experience you had with a great loss in your life. And it was the fulfillment of this note, right, from your co-students many years ago. The fulfillment of really putting your heart on the page. What was that writing experience like?
Jennifer Niven: It was so hard. I think I had to tell myself that no one would ever have to read it if I didn't want them to. That I would just write it, and I could protect it if I didn't ever want to share. And I think once I gave myself permission to do that, and to tell myself that no one ever had to look at it but me, then I really felt more free to write the story the way I needed to write it.
I cried when I wrote it. And I laughed when I wrote it. And I cried some more when I wrote it. And I think that that was finally feeling all that emotion that my fellow students had talked about way back when, just allowing yourself to feel that so that your reader could feel it too.
Sarah Enni: Before I ask you a few more questions about All the Bright Places, I would love for you to just give us the official pitch for that book, if you don't mind.
Jennifer Niven: This is probably the only book I have an elevator pitch for. And it's just because I thought of one line, which is; it's about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.
Sarah Enni: There you go. That's a good pitch.
Jennifer Niven: Thank you.
Sarah Enni: You talked about how writing this book was really emotional, this six weeks of writing the first draft. Of course, then it's a big deal book. It got a really big rollout, and very quickly it must've become clear to you that many people were going to read it.
Jennifer Niven: Just terrifying.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. What's it been like for you?
Jennifer Niven: It was so surreal and it was very different from my experience with the other books, especially because I was writing for teens. I knew when I was writing I felt this great responsibility with the subject matter. And I wanted to be as honest as I could and to do my due diligence by giving it to experts, and also people who had gone through similar things, to read.
I'd obviously had my experience with loss and the real life Finch's experience, just knowing him firsthand. But it was really important, ahead of time, not knowing what kind of response it would get. But part of it was, it was such a strange year. Because in 2014 my mom died very suddenly. So I had just kind of gotten over the death, or gotten past the death, of my mentor and then my mom died very suddenly.
All the Bright Places was the last book of mine that she ever read. And she wrote me this beautiful email, just telling me what she saw happening for the book and how she saw that it would help so many lives. And I still have that email and I just treasure it. And I had absolutely no idea. And I think I was so focused on what had happened with my mother, that it was hard to kind of process all that was happening with the book.
But I do remember very clearly going to my first event, the book was not yet out, but I was doing a pre-publicity tour. And one of the students, I was talking to a school group, one of the students said, "Do you mind talking about the real life Finch? And do you mind telling us something about him and your experience when you lost him?"
And I remember thinking, "Oh my god. I have this choice right now. I can either talk about it or not talk about it." And I'm a private person so my instinct was not to talk about it. But then I thought, "Well, here are all these young readers and they need someone to talk about these things because they're going through these things."
And from that point on, I just never looked back. And continually, I wake up and I'm blown away by all the readers I hear from, and the loveliness, and the outpouring, and the sharing of their stories. And it's something I don't think I fully processed. I'm so grateful for it.
Sarah Enni: I have a few questions about this. I really appreciate you speaking to that moment because another thing I talk to many writers about when they write books like this that are not only very personal, but also definitely talking about sensitive subjects. That, of course, since we're writing for teenagers, we want to be even more thoughtful about.
Many people who write books that are about difficult topics and are also very personal, get overwhelmed by the response. Because you've done this emotional outpouring and then people want to respond with their feelings. But that is a lot for one person to take on. Especially when you have millions of readers. Then you get a lot of feedback and that can really take a toll.
So you choosing to be open about it is such a wonderful thing, but I'd love to hear about how you've protected yourself, or how you've determined where to draw the lines? Or, just from the perspective of maybe other people who are writing about sensitive things, what would you advise about drawing those boundaries?
Jennifer Niven: I think that's such a great question because I didn't anticipate it. I wasn't quite prepared for it. But I remember talking to David Levithan (editorial director at Scholastic and the author of many young adult novels, including Boy Meets Boy, Every Day, and co-author with Rachel Cohn of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares) early on.
It was just after the book had come out and we did an event together. And because I know David hears from so many readers, and meets readers, and has a similar sort of outpouring. And I said, "How do you do it? Because I'm staying up all night trying to answer everyone."
And there are all these people who are in desperate need of attention and care, and what do you do because you want to help them all, but you're not a doctor, you know? And just all the things you feel. And then at the same time wanting to help protect myself a little bit, and my energy. And David said, "The thing to remember is we're ambassadors of empathy and we do what we can, but it's okay not to be able to do all of it."
It just somehow gave me permission to just realize I can do the very best I can to respond and to be there, certainly, in person. I remember touring Brazil with Ava Dellaira (author of Love Letters to the Dead and In Search of Us. Listen to her First Draft interviews here and here) and we were saying, "We've never been cried on so much."
I mean that in a wonderful way, they're just the outpouring of love. And also just, "Here's my story." And, "Here's my story, and here's my story."
But you do have to protect yourself and your energy. You do have to put the oxygen mask on first in order to be able to be there for your readers, for your writing.
But I will say, I truly mean this, that my readers mean just as much to me, if not more so, especially cause they came along at a time in my life when I just lost my mother and I was going through so much loss, like Violet. And I feel like they came along and really reminded me of All the Bright Places, despite all they go through.
So many of them are struggling in silence, but there are these resilient, strong spirits and I've had so many say, "You've saved my life. The book saved my life." And I try to remind them that, "Actually you've saved your life." Like, "If I've helped in any way, that's amazing. But you've saved your life."
And I still struggle with it. I still want to talk to every single person and answer every single person. I think just allowing yourself to give yourself permission to just say, "I'm going to do my best. And some days my best is better than other days, but I'm just going to do my best."
Sarah Enni: I appreciate you speaking to that so much. You just totally teed me up by bringing up David Levitan, which I love, to talk about Take Me With You When You Go. But I also want to talk about Netflix and screenwriting a little bit, because I know that's also a part of your career right now.
I want to sort of bridge the gap, a little bit, by asking about the adaptation for All the Bright Places. Because I've read a few interviews with you, and the director, and the screenwriter, where you talked about, "Our discussions of mental health, and suicide especially, adjust and change over time. And we're all learning all the time about how to speak to things."
So I know that when the Netflix adaptation was coming about you were able to revisit it. And I'm just curious about what that was like for you and what it's been like to see this book become a living document through its renewal on Netflix?
Because you're just in that realm of talking about sensitive things, as well, with the new book with David.
Jennifer Niven: It's such a complicated experience, but in a good way. Seeing it take on this life that is separate from the book, in a lot of ways. And what we tried to do was capture the heart of the book, the heart of Finch and Violet, but you have so much less real estate on film than you do in the book.
But I think the thing that I love most about having it on Netflix is that it reaches all these new readers, or viewers. They may never read the book, but they've gotten something from the movie and that's wonderful.
And Brett, the director, and Liz, who I wrote the script with, and I, we really felt very conscientious with this huge responsibility. I think Netflix also did, too, especially in the wake of 13 Reasons Why. They were feeling a lot of responsibility about doing our best.
And again, it comes down to doing our best by the viewer just as, hopefully, we have by the reader. And to not make it feel like it's romanticized or exploitative or anything like that. But to feel like an honest, true story, which it is. And for me, as I said, the best thing about it is, first of all, it's very surreal seeing it. I've seen it multiple times, but just seeing it is jarring, you're like, "Oh wait a second."
But I remember when, and I'm kind of all over the place in this answer, but when the film first came out, I think right before it came out, Brett was a little nervous about it because of the subject matter and the weight of it.
And I told him what I've been telling myself about the books themselves, which is, once you create the project, you've done everything you can, you've done your absolute best. You've put all of yourself into it, you've done it as honestly and responsibly as possible. Then you put it out and it belongs to the consumer.
So it belongs to the reader, it belongs to the viewer and everyone's gonna have a different opinion about it. And that's fine. That's actually great. And I think all we can do is, do our best by it, which is what we tried to do.
Sarah Enni: I appreciate this perspective because there's a lot of expectations that some people put on YA books to present things ideally. And what you are actually presenting in All the Bright Places is, of course, a fictionalized story. But it's also your story. It's about an experience that you have had firsthand. So we come up against the fact that life is problematic and that things are not always perfect.
I don't really have a great question related to that, but that's what I thought of in this, was, you gotta stay true to things that happen in real life while also being, as you say, responsible to the audience and thoughtful about what the experience of the viewer is going to be. And I just appreciate that because it is important to have complicated stories out there also, you know?
Jennifer Niven: It is. And I think readers, viewers, they appreciate it too. One of the things I've heard most about from readers about All the Bright Places is because of what happens with Finch, because of the fact that he didn't really talk about what he was going through, or reach out for help, they now realize they need to do that. Because they don't want, you know, X, Y, and Z to happen. They don't want to have this sort of ending. They want to live.
And so I think that's one of the best things I've heard from them, and also from viewers, just, "I don't want to be like that. So I am now getting help." And that's amazing.
Sarah Enni: That's huge. Well, I appreciate you speaking to that and I do want to talk about Take Me With You When You Go. I promise you, this is gonna be a long one. We're finally getting to it.
[Both laugh]
Jennifer Niven: I love it.
Sarah Enni: So you mentioned reaching out to David Levithan and being in conversation with him as a fellow author and someone who's also written about a lot of different things that are sensitive, and they're beautiful, and very vulnerable. I'd love to hear about how co-writing a book came about with David.
Jennifer Niven: Well, it's funny because I am rarely on Twitter and David is almost never on Twitter. And I was on Twitter answering questions, this is a few years ago now, and someone said, "Who would you most like to collaborate with?" And I said, "David Levithan." And David happened to see it. And a week later he wrote me an email and he said, "Be careful you wish for." And he sent me a first chapter of the book that would become Take Me With You When You Go.
Jennifer Niven: He said, "I don't know if you'd be interested, but if you would, there are three rules. One, we don't tell anyone we're doing this. Two, we don't think just write. And three, we don't ever discuss what's gonna happen in the book." So we completely adhered to those rules. I sent him a chapter back and it's written in email form.
And he wrote as Ezra and I wrote Bea, his sister. And because we wrote in email form, they weren't ever really in the same place, so we could do the back and forth without discussing it. But I will say, it was really fun to challenge David and vice versa.
It was so fun to be like, "Hmm, now what can I do that's gonna completely surprise him?" And then he would do the same thing. And we wrote it never ever knowing what the other was going to do, or what the other's character was going to do. And I've never written like that.
Sarah Enni: So let's just pause and get a pitch for the book really quick. And then I'll ask a bunch more questions about it, please.
Jennifer Niven: Take Me With You When You Go is told in alternating perspectives between Ezra and Bea, they're brother and sister. Ezra wakes up one morning to discover that Bea is gone. She's left two months before her graduation from high school, leaving him with his not so great, pretty abusive stepfather and mother. And the only thing she left behind was an email address.
Sarah Enni: Such an "Ahh!" opening. And basically what you just described was the first chapter that arrived in your in-box.
Jennifer Niven: Yeah, exactly. I was like, "Ooh, this is gonna be fun."
Sarah Enni: I would love to hear about what it was like to develop, as the story went, how did you even get your mind around this first response to David? How were you kind of approaching it?
Jennifer Niven: First of all, I was terrified. Because I thought, "Oh my God." David is one of the authors I admire most. I love his work. I've always read it. And so suddenly to be told, "Don't think about it." And usually I do a lot of prep work for characters. I know the general story that I'm going to tell, and I couldn't do any of that. So I just literally said, "Okay, let me see."
So I sat down and I just wrote something back. And it went a little slowly because we both had other projects, obviously, over the past couple of years. Sometimes we would go months without writing to each other. And then all of a sudden, a chapter would appear in my inbox. And it was really fun.
I think one of the highest compliments I got was, David said that I threw him for one of the biggest creative loops of his entire career. And he wasn't sure at the time if it was good or bad, but then he decided it was good.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that, that's so interesting. And David has co-written a few other books as well. And it seems like this is his process, which is funny. But it's also an interesting way to just be in conversation with another writer. And, as you say, to throw loops and challenge, and to have a sense of play about a project, even as it's developing, which is such fun. That sounds great.
Jennifer Niven: It's such a great way to do it. But I will tell you, there are times when Ezra, his character, was really mad at Bea, my character. And I would get these angry chapters in email form. And I was like, "Why is he so mad at me?" Because it's in the form it is, and because you're not really talking about it, it becomes very personal, which is, ultimately, a good thing.
Sarah Enni: So given this really unique way of how the book came together, and you weren't looking behind or ahead, you're just in the moment, what was the editing process like? Or how did it move into the next phase of published life?
Jennifer Niven: We went over each other's work as well as our own. We never really edited each other, but we would make suggestions, or have queries, or things like that. And then Random House, of course, they were also doing kind of a similar thing as they went through it. And then David and I would divvy it up. So one of us would take first pass at the edits and then I would send it to David or he would send it to me.
And if there were a lot of things in his section or in my section, we would leave that for the other one. So I still felt like Ezra was really his and Bea was really mine. So I didn't feel like I could really edit that, nor did I really want to. But it was definitely a conversation and a give and take of like, "Oh, what about this here? Would Ezra maybe do this instead?"
Sarah Enni: So interesting, and it also seems like a gift. It doesn't sound like there was really a hard deadline on this, or there was not a lot of pressure involved in it. So it's really wonderful to have this side thing develop over time and now become a real book in the world.
Jennifer Niven: It's kind of like, "Oh my gosh, it's real. How did that happen?" It was funny, when we sold it to Random House, I think they had seen the first hundred or so pages. And then they asked, "What's the rest of it?" They said, "If you could just send us an outline of what the rest of it is." And David was like, "Nope, that's not how we're writing it." So they had to be very understanding and patient about that.
Sarah Enni: [Chuckles] They're like, "Oh David. At it again."
Jennifer Niven: Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about the other things, as you say, you were working on other YA novels. So after All the Bright Places, you also released Holding Up the Universe and Breathless, which are two other standalone YA contempts. And I think, if I have it right, you are adapting Holding Up the Universe right now, is that correct?
Jennifer Niven: I am. That's right. Yes.
Sarah Enni: I would love to hear about that. This is such a wonderful closing of the loop, bringing screenplay back into the mix. So what was it that made you decide to jump in and take hold of this adaptation all by yourself?
Jennifer Niven: It was so lovely. Because of All the Bright Places and my work on that, then when Holding Up the Universe was optioned, they asked if I wanted to write that one as well. And I thought about it and I said, "Okay, sure." And I mean, I love writing screenplays. Novels are kind of my heart home, or books are my heart home, but I do enjoy the dialogue and I enjoy writing something that is in a different format.
And also, I will say, it's really fun to get to revisit Jack and Libby, but in this other way. And also, I get to create new scenes for them and that's really fun. So it's almost like writing a sequel in a way, because you're writing the same characters, a lot of the story is there, but you're also getting to create this whole new life for them. And so that was really exciting.
At first we were gonna do it as a television show and the producers were amazing. They were like, "We basically leave it up to you. How you see it." And I said, "I think I see it more as a film."
Sarah Enni: Did you say that after you'd given the pilot a shot?
Jennifer Niven: No. I actually said it before, surprisingly. I actually said it before I started writing, but I thought, "I actually love television and I've developed a couple of things here and there, but I really love writing a film." And I think that's what it needed to be.
Sarah Enni: You have so many like arrows in your quiver, shall we say?
Jennifer Niven: [Laughs] I love that.
Sarah Enni: Do you think that writing original things for the screen is a part of what you see for yourself in the future? Or do you think sticking with books as the original output is...? How do you think about it?
Jennifer Niven: That's a great question. I have thought here and there about maybe doing something original. Nothing has come to fruition, but I've developed TV shows. I developed one with Charlie Sheen. I developed one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and most recently with Seth Gordon.
They haven't come to fruition, but it's been a really fun, amazing process. And I think that to do an original would be really challenging and, you know I don't shy away from doing something different. So I haven't done that yet, Sarah, so maybe!
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, it seems like a new challenge every few years, re-invention. I love it. Okay, was there anything else about Take Me With You When You Go that you wanted to make sure we got to or talked about?
I did bring it up in asking about the sensitive subject because, in that book, you guys do talk about abuse in the home, and kids really dealing with feeling unsafe in their home life. So I am interested in how you guys talked about presenting that, or dealing with that.
Jennifer Niven: When we were actually writing it, again, we didn't talk about it but that was the way the story kind of unfolded. And it was interesting because I think that we both knew our characters well enough, and kind of knew their home life, we could envision their home life without having talked about it, without having to really plot it out or plan it.
But it is an arena that David and I are comfortable in, in terms of writing sensitive subjects. Not that those subjects are ever comfortable, but I think getting to write that too, something like that with David, I feel very honored. Because I do think he's a wonderful ambassador of empathy, to use his own words, about what we do.
And certainly after the book was finished, we went back over it to try to be as sensitive as possible. And we had some readers go through it who had firsthand experience. We had some experts go through it so that, again, we could try to do our due diligence to make sure that when you're handling a sensitive topic like abuse, which is in the book, that it's handled as responsibly as possible.
Sarah Enni: Is there anything else about any of the other projects, or anything you have going on right now that you'd like to talk about?
Jennifer Niven: I am starting work on my next solo YA, so I'm just starting to work on that. And I'm very excited cause the characters, it's at that point Sarah, and I know you know this, when all of a sudden the characters come to life and you start getting that momentum and you're like, "Oh gosh!" And you just want to sit down and write. So that's always good. So, I'm at that stage, which is good.
Sarah Enni: Ah! The most wonderful stage.
Jennifer Niven: Yes, absolutely.
Sarah Enni: Oh, this has been so fun. I like to wrap up with advice. So, we were just talking about not being shy about re-inventing yourself professionally. I would just love to hear if you have advice for somebody who is sort of thinking about taking a big swing and facing that kind of scary choice, what would you advise them?
Jennifer Niven: Well, I would start with what my mom said, "There are enough people in this world who will tell you no, so don't be one of them." So, don't limit yourself or what you can do. Believe in yourself. Try not to do whatever it is you're about to do with someone looking over your shoulder and judging you. Just try to shut that out.
My mom used to say, "Just put it in the imaginary bus locker and lock it away and try to do that as much as you can. And remember to just know that what you have to say in this world, whether it's on paper, on the screen, in music, however you say it, it's so important because you are the only you there is.”
So, you are the only one who has that particular voice and we need to hear from you. And I would just say, "You can do it. Just believe in it."
Sarah Enni: Awesome. I love that. Well, this has been so fun, Jennifer. Thank you for giving me so much of your time this morning.
Jennifer Niven: Oh my gosh, Sarah! I can't tell you how much I appreciate all your preparation, all your thoughtful, thoughtful, thoughtful questions. It's just really been a joy.
Sarah Enni: Oh, thank you!
Thank you so much to Jennifer. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @JenniferNivon and follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram), and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
First Draft is produced by me, Sarah Enni. Today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to social media director, Jennifer Nkosi and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.
And as ever thanks to you, proverbial bus lockers, for listening.
Sarah Enni: By the way, I love that. I would totally watch or read or tune in to like thirsty biography.
Jennifer Niven: Oh my God, me too!
Sarah Enni:
So much of the time I'm watching a documentary and I'm like, "Wait a second. That's what he looked like? Whoa. Alright!"
[Laughing] Side note, but...
Support the Show
Join the First Draft Patreon, or make a monthly or one-time donation via PayPal or Venmo
Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Sign up for the First Draft Newsletter
Track Changes Learn how the traditional publishing industry works in the Track Changes podcast mini-series.
Rate, Review, and Recommend
Take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!