Ep. 304 | A Tapesetry of World Building and Characters w/ Jennifer L. Armentrout
Ep. 304 | A Tapesetry of World Building and Characters w/ Jennifer L. Armentrout
Jennifer L. Armentrout, the phenomenal New York Times Bestselling author of the Flesh and Fire Series, The Blood and Ash Series and so much more, dives deep with Lorien McKenna.
They discuss Jennifer's process and how she keeps such high concept sci/fi romance with so many worlds, timelines and characters afloat and fresh. They also talk through the challenges of the publishing world.
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The Screenwriting Life is produced and edited by Alex Alcheh.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
orien: Hey everyone, welcome back to TSL. I'm Lorien McKenna, and today I'm talking to one of my favorite authors in the romance space, Jennifer L. Armentrout. Jennifer is a novelist from West Virginia who has written over 77 books. Jennifer's books include the Titan series, the Covenant series, the Wicked series, the Lux series, the Harbingers trilogy, the Dark Element series, and perhaps her two most successful series, Flesh and Fire and Blood and Ash.
She has been nominated and received numerous awards, including the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for From Blood and Ash. Jennifer is the owner of Apollycon and the Origin event, the successful annual events that features over 100 best-selling authors in the young adult, new adult, and adult fiction, panels, parties, and more.
She is also the proud owner of a bookstore in West Virginia, Miss Willa's, named after her character, Willa Collins, from the Blood and Ash series. She is known for her ability to weave character with high concept seamlessly and do so insanely fast. She has said she has written a full novel in seven days.
So Jennifer, welcome to the show.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me.
Lorien: The first segment we do is called “Adventures in Screenwriting”, or we can call it “Adventures in Writing”, and we talk about our week! So, my week; this week is a week of realizing that I am halfway through almost all of my projects, and that I should probably, pick one and finish, right?
I've got a memoir, I've got a book, I've got a short story, I've got a feature screenplay and two pilots, and then I'm like, "You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna start a new pilot." That's what I'm gonna do- ... I'm gonna start a new TV show pilot. Like, that's exactly what I need. Before I even got on this call, the Zoom with you, I was thinking about what the structure of the pilot was instead of attacking one of those projects that I'm in the middle of.
And, it's that balance that I'm always struggling with, which is where are the projects that I can move forward in terms of, like to pitch something and get a TV show set up, or I really wanna finish that memoir because it's meaningful... But I feel like all these projects, I don't have the time or the energy to really focus on one because of the bullshit of life.
Like, my daughter got her black belt a couple weeks ago in karate. Amazing! And as I'm walking out to my car, some shithead had hit my parked car and driven away. So I have to deal with that, right? Like, I needed that. So it's, you know, calling the insurance and all the things. And, I don't quite know how to move through this space, and it's really frustrating, so instead of beating myself up and judging myself, I'm just noticing that is this particular era. I was hoping I was in my villain era, but apparently I'm in my halfway era.
Jennifer: You know, I think we're all in that era of what the fuck is going on? So hard to concentrate because it's like everything is always constantly happening. So I completely understand. You start a project and then you just get distracted, and then something happens, and then you're like, "Well, why am I even doing this? Cause this is happening”.
Lorien: Well, how was your week?
Jennifer: I have spent the last week, because I sit all day writing, in the evenings, when I'm no longer writing, since it's the summer here, I go outside.
And I get into this habit of starting new outdoor projects like building, um, garden beds, um, which requires digging up the grass and the soil, which always is like, "I can do that," and then three days later I'm still digging up fucking grass.
Lorien: And there's a root because there's a tree right there. And, oh wait, you planted this other thing and there's some weird bulbs in the ground.
Jennifer: Yeah and it's a lot of shell dirt, so it's like dirt and ginormous rocks. It's clay, so it's, I think it's clay and shell I dug out. I don't know what the amount is, but it was a pretty decent amount. And then building the garden beds I think they're, like, 11 inches wide. It's like a landscape block, which one of them by itself is not heavy, but it's very, back-breaking. But I enjoy doing it because again, it's like you sit all day and I don't have to really use my head doing it. I probably should because I always mess up the measurements somehow. And so it's like I'm just going about it. But, um, I, that's like when I listen to podcasts the whole time. I'm just listening, um, to podcasts and just zoning out. You know, so it, that's pretty much what my whole week has been is just doing that.
Lorien: Awesome. What podcasts are you listening to?
Jennifer: I listen to, which people are gonna be like "Why?", but I listen to a lot of political podcasts. Mainly with working all day, I wanna know what's going on. But I also listen to ones that also kind of have humor because, I have to be able to laugh.
Lorien: Well, otherwise, I don't know what-
Jennifer: I- I don't know what's gonna happen ... yeah. Right, talk about entering your villain era.
Lorien: So you're writing all day, are you disciplined enough to not be checking the news, you're not checking your email?
Jennifer: No, I have ADD and even though I'm medicated there's not enough medication in the world to stop me from this. And you just make the mistake of hitting refresh on a social media site, and you're just like, "Wait, what?". You almost have to teach yourself where it's like, "Okay, you know what? I can't pay attention to this right now." Like, like you were saying, I have bills due. I have a job.
Lorien: Yeah.
Jennifer: And when I'm done, I'm gonna then I'll pay attention to this. Obviously, that doesn't always work 'cause sometimes you see something where you're just, you know, your whole day is just gone. So, I try my best to not to, but honestly… You know how you can get those apps that disconnect your internet? I can't do it because I'm like, "How dare you tell me what I can and can't do?" Yeah. I get very angry. I'll just pick up my phone.
Lorien: Pick up my phone. Exactly. There are workarounds to all of that. So I'm a huge fan of your work, but I can't say I've read all 77 of your books.
Jennifer: It'a A lot.
Lorien: But I have read quite a few of them. I love series, and something I'm so impressed with that you do is world building and character forward stories. How you'll take a series and then how you've interconnected them to other series, this sort of fifth dimensional or four dim- I don't know what, I don't know how many dimensions there are -, but like that there are-
Jennifer: Too many.
Lorien: Too many. But that’s so rich and it's so fun. You get to the end and you're like, "Ooh, I can read the backstory about this character and how they got to where they are." When you sit down to start a book, say, "Oh, I have this idea or character,". What are you starting with? 'Cause I see where you go, but what's your beginning point?
Jennifer: Usually it's a character, like a certain type of character. I used to always think that it was just the character that comes to me, but now as I think back over the years, I don't think that's the case when I'm writing contemporary because the character almost is, in contemporaries a lot of times, unless you're doing suspense or something like that, the character is the plot. You know, you may have a secondary plot, but with fantasy and things like that, I realize that I must come up with a character and the plot or the world-building. And so when I think of the Blood and Ash series, it was the world-building, the plot and the characters that kind of came to me at the same time. I think that maybe the world itself started to come to me a little bit before that. But I do feel like for me, they happen at the same time. Like, once I really start to think about it, like when I know I'm gonna do this book, then it's like they feed off one another, the characters and the world in which they're interacting in.
Lorien: So, you have a world starting to come to you. What is your process? Are you writing notes? Are you drawing pictures? Cause I know for me, I write for the stage and screen, and I'm just getting into writing a book. I'm just so curious because I'm very character forward. Which drives the plot, which drives all of it, like you're saying. But what are you doing physically with the process, to move through it?
Jennifer: Well when it's, like a contemporary, I feel like I just can kinda, like, freeball it.
Lorien: So you just start writing?
Jennifer: Yeah. And if I have a general idea of what the story's gonna be about, like, what the conflicts are. I feel like that doesn't give me a lot of, "Okay, you need to sit down and think about this," type of situations. When it's a fantasy, or even a suspense or thriller, you really can't do that. You know, you really can't do that in a thriller or if you do, I feel like a reader can tell that you were just winging it. But, I kind of write like, a little mini synopsis. Not anything that is coherent and there will be a lot of gaps in the synopsis. So, like how did you get from point A to D? It's like, don't worry about that, I'll figure it out.
Lorien: So, what's an example of that? Like, I have this character, and she's living in this sort of sheltered life, and then she is challenged and her belief system is challenged. Are you getting into specifics?
Jennifer: Well, yes. When I think of the Blood and Ash series, I think what I did first was I kinda did a little description of the world. And that changed, of course as I started writing, some of that stuff changed. But, what the background was and what was going, who were the Ascendant, the gods, and then certain locations. That's when I started incorporating the characters and how I wanted them to move within this world. But with fantasy, I kind of have to get my head wrapped around that world first. So I would write a little really generic synopsis.
I'm not someone who's able to do an outline. I wish I could. I am jealous of the people who can do that. I always say I get performance anxiety, because I'm like, "I can't think of all this sitting down right now." And so I try to get out, what I know is important, which is basically where the world is at once that the characters are introduced and really understanding that. It's a lot of, again, writing a couple paragraphs really. And then at that point, I know enough about the character. What I usually do is I'll start writing the first chapter and see, “Okay, do I know enough of this world myself yet to be able to go?”.
But, I would say with the first book, it wasn't a lot of planning. Now that's not entirely true because I had the idea from like 2016 to 2019 before I wrote it. And I was tinkering with it in the back of my head that whole time. But the first book didn't require a lot of in-depth planning. But once you get further into the series, it's a lot heavier because you're also now having to remember all the shit you wrote, and you know, "Why did I write that?" and making sure you're not working yourself into a plot hole or a plot corner basically.
Lorien: Right. And then you have this whole other series that takes place eons before- I don't know how long, I forget what the time, like how many…
Jennifer: Yeah, I never actually clarified the timeline and readers ask so much and that's why. I was like "No," because I know I'm gonna save time and I'm not going to remember that-
Lorien: If people could do the math ...
Jennifer: … or it's gonna conflict with something I said. And they always are asking but I've never confirmed.
Lorien: So some amount of generations in the past, right? And then you're connecting it. How have you made notes about what you're connecting? Is there a - I always imagine a big chart or something like that.
Jennifer: I have a compendium basically, or a bible that the editors started creating because you're not the only person that has to remember this, your editors do too. So they started, I think probably by book two. Book one they had a really generic one and then it just grew and grew. By the time I got to A Shadow in the Ember, which was the first book in the spinoff, it was [huge]. For some reason I printed it out like I was ever going to open it up. Just wasting paper and ink. But it was heavy and it was thick because they go so in depth. It's broken down to the kingdoms, the realms, settings, locations, characters, character traits. It's an insane amount of information.
Lorien: Right
Jennifer: There'd be something that I wrote very little, but they flagged it because they're like, "Hey, this may come back around." And so, when I get stuck sometimes and I don't have time to really read through chapters, I go to the bible and try to find it in there. Just to double-check something because they also do a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. It's only, like, a couple sentences that summarizes the chapters and that's what I end up referring back to heavily. That definitely helps because for some reason I thought it was a good idea to write in the same world, but, you know, X amount of time apart. So trying to remember things like, "Damn it, do they know about this yet?” And I was like, "Never again. No one allow me to do this again."
Lorien: But then you did it in another series too, right? Where you have the-
Jennifer: Well, I do spin-offs, yeah.
Lorien: Yes.
Jennifer: Covenant and I wanna say Lux and Harbinger, I've done that. But, it wasn't X amount of years in the past. I feel like that is where it gets you, because the world is similar enough that you have to be… like, there'd be things that had happened in Blood and Ash that the characters in Flesh and Fire would have no idea about, and trying to remember that. Like, I'll email the editor sometimes if I can't find it in the compendium, and I'll be like, "Okay, you know, did I, you know, is this right? Like, would this, would they know about this?". Just to double-check because, again, because you spew everything out and I think readers or viewers, a lot of times, they think that you remember. I don't, because sometimes I'm not even aware of what I'm writing when it's not these huge important conversations and things like that. So you have to be careful when you're writing the filler stuff, because the filler stuff is important, but that's not the stuff I feel like for me that gets stuck in my head.
Lorien: I think it's so great you have a team working on that with you. It's similar to TV, right? You have a story area, which is like, "Here's what the pilot is gonna be about," a couple of paragraphs and then the outline. Which is very, "Here's what the scenes are in it.". And then when you go to series, you write the bible for the show, the rules of the world, the rules, everything, so you go back and double-check it. But it's all on the showrunner, right? And the writing team. So I think that's great you have somebody else working with you on that.
Jennifer: And I've been lucky with this series, that it's been the same editor and same editing team. Because at other publishers I've had editors change in the middle of a series. Then, you know you hope, because they don't always, but you hope- they go back and reread the previous books. They don't always do that, and they kind of rely on the copy editor to come in.
Lorien: Oh, wow.
Jennifer: And, and that really does irritate you because your copy edits shouldn't be super intensive. Because they're catching stuff that was missed, so that's when you do get a little frustrated.
Lorien: Like logical things or rules of the world?
Jennifer: Or like, hey, this conflicts with this, this conflicts with that.
Lorien: I've talked to a lot of authors and I have friends who write and there's the self-publishing route. Which you went through. You went down that path in the beginning, right?
Jennifer: Well, in the beginning I did small press, like independent publishing.
Lorien: Oh, okay.
Jennifer: Then I self-published, then I did traditional, but I go back and forth. For example, like right now if I was writing contemporary romance, I'm not gonna give that to a publisher.
Lorien: No?
Jennifer: I mean, [publishers] pretty much conceded defeat to indie publishing in that genre because they cannot turn a book around quick enough. It’s just their process. There's so many cogs in the wheel and probably not as many as there needs to be. Because we're not talking about editorial or anything like that, we're talking about decisions by committees and that sort of thing. Everything gets slowed down for the once a month meeting and it was a lot of pricing and stuff like that. But with indie, obviously you don't wanna undersell yourself, but in this economy? Also you're competing against kindle, you're competing against all this other stuff. I feel like when indie publishing really took off, I wanna say it was probably around like 2000, cause obviously there was independent publishing before this, but there was a boom around 2011, 2012, and after that publishers couldn't keep up with the schedule of books. Because they're dealing with print, but more importantly they're dealing with the bookstores, and the bookstores only have so much shelf space. So you live and die by when they can put that book into a store and how many copies they can carry. I feel like around that time you started seeing a lot of the big publishers just thinning out the romance genre and canceling a lot of contracts with their midlist authors.
And I know a lot of people hear something like midlist and they think that's bad, but midlist is actually not bad for the author or the publisher. The publisher relies on their midlist because they know out the gate how many books that's gonna sell. They keep the lights on. And they started thinning. People who were working, like traditional romance authors who were with them for decades, were just losing contracts and not being renewed or being given such low advances.
Lorien: So it seems in your experience in this space, that's what's working out for you. I remember years ago there was a whole like self-published trend, Because you couldn't get somebody to publish it. But it's different now, right?
Jennifer: Oh, yeah. I think my first book was 2010 or 2011 and they (big publishers) turned their nose up at indie publishing in general. Some people would kind of be like a little “eh” against Kensington. And that’s because Kensington and Sourcebooks were the two bigger independent houses. They weren't a part of the big five or how many they are now. When I hear indie authors complaining today, I'm gonna be like, "In my time," You could not get people to even review your books.
Lorien: How do you feel about the word romantasy? Let's talk about that for a second.
Jennifer: I think it's a very catchy word for a genre that has existed underneath, romance with a fantasy element. But here's the thing though. Not that long ago, if you walked into a bookstore, and still very much to this day, if it's a fantasy romance, it's in the romance section. It's not gonna be in that fantasy section. In a lot of situations they just call it paranormal romance or urban fantasy.
Lorien: Right.
Jennifer: And urban fantasy were fantasies that took place in our world, but there were obvious differences. If you look at Sarah Maas' Crescent City or Nalini Singh's series, it's our world with big differences. But fantasy romance just wasn't a separate category because it was almost like you couldn't have fantasy in a romance, even though those books did exist. They were just labeled underneath paranormal romance or they were put into young adult. Romance is the highest selling genre in publishing, and has been since Lord knows when. And fantasy is probably, I don't know for sure, but if I had to wager a guess, the top selling right now of romance genre itself.
Because if you think about fantasy, even like 15 years ago, it was mostly very male dominated and romance did not exist. If it did, it was treated as a consequence and women were never typically… Let’s just say things did not end well for women.
Lorien: Same thing in features, where the female character and the romance bleeds together. The B plot exists to further the man's story and to provide complication so that he gets to grow.
And then sometimes they die because they're “not needed anymore”, or they become a symbol of a wife, mother, or sister. So it's cultural. How fun is that?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think that's why you see such a popularity in it because you see the characters taking on positions of power and authority. And if it’s a male-female relationship, it's not overshadowing and they're not in competition.They're usually on the same playing field. And that's just something you really did not see as a whole in fantasy. And like you said, it was mostly to kind of propel the guy's arc. Guarantee you're not surviving the story nine times out of 10.
Lorien: No.
Jennifer: Or again, you become that queen.
Lorien: You're certainly not driving it in any way. That is your goal in the Blood and Ash and the one that takes place generations before right? It's the powerhouse of a woman who comes into her power, and then the male love interest is a supporter. He has his own power, and isn't threatened by her at all, even if she does become more powerful in some way.
And that is what I really relate to in a lot of your books. It's an opportunity for women to see themselves as, "Yeah, I'm the badass, I can have romance and I don't have to choose." Because so many of us feel like there's a constant question. Especially as a writer. Like, is writing a real career? I'm a wife and a mother, and where do I prioritize all that stuff? But in your books, it's like, no, you can do it. You just have to find a partner that is like, "Yeah, I'm not threatened by you at all. Go do your thing."
Jennifer: Yeah, and I think for me personally I always want to avoid reversing the power dynamic. Which is good but in romance, you can't have a reversal of the power dynamic because it doesn't matter if it's the guy or the girl, or the other girl and the other guy in the relationship. Once somebody holds way more power, then the other person is unequal. And again, when I say power, it doesn't necessarily mean strength or special abilities. They have to be on the same level in one way or another. I have to be more careful that I'm not just simply reversing the power dynamic. I'd rather have them on the same playing field. But also, there's gonna be times when she is gonna be more powerful and times when he is going to be more powerful because that's real. We all have times when we get knocked down or something happens where we're not the one in charge basically or in control.
Lorien: What do you read?
Jennifer: Right now I haven't started anything recently but usually if I'm writing fantasy, I'm reading contemporary and vice versa. Because I don't want to unintentionally take on attributes of what I'm reading.
I forget who said this, it was somebody well-known from the Greek times, I don't know if it was Socrates or whatever. They said that there are only seven stories to tell and then the difference is how you tell that story. So I feel like when you're reading in the same genre, you're inevitably going to find similarities. So when I'm writing fantasy, I won't read it. Not only that but I feel like I'm then comparing myself to what I'm reading.
Lorien: That's actually a good idea. I find that what I'm really drawn to watching on TV is nothing like what I'm writing. Because, for maybe the same reason, I wanna separate it and I like to write things that are different from what I like to watch.
Can we talk about ApollyCon for a minute?
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Lorien: You've created this amazing conference where you have authors come and it's like Comic-Con for, for writers and fans. Why were you like, "I'm gonna do this. There's a gap and I'm gonna fill it.”?
Jennifer: It started off with, which I feel like a lot of authors can understand, I had a book coming out, The Return, the spin-off of The Covenant and the publisher wanted me to do events. And I don't care who you are as an author or where you're at in your career, you always know you're going to do an in-store book signing, and ain't nobody gonna show up. So it's something you dread and you don't wanna do it by yourself. So I was like, "Well, if I'm going to be miserable, I would like to have other people miserable with me." So one of the bloggers, because this was back then before BookTok and Bookstagram, was like, "Well, how about we do, like, an event, like rent out a hotel conference space or ballroom and invite authors?" It wasn't originally my idea other than I wanted to do an event with a couple of authors that I knew.
At that time (2015) there weren't a lot of those events. There was Book Bash, BEA was happening every year, BookCon and RT Book Convention. So there were a lot of them. So it started as that and it was like a one-day event because I didn't wanna do an event by myself. And even now, whenever I have to do them I'm always, it just doesn't matter who you are it happens, and you're just always like, "Oh man,".
It grew from there because as the years went by a lot of the book events started closing because you do not make money doing those and instead you spend money doing these events. You're not Comic-Con, at the end of the day, which makes their money off of sponsorships and things like that, so I knew I wanted to grow it to kind of replace or fill the hole of the RT Book Convention, because that was the biggest one at the time and it had stopped.
But I knew I had to grow it slow because events can get away from you very very quickly. But I have a team, a staff that does the bulk of the planning and I always say I'm like the Jennocracy. Like, so I have fun with it. We have been lucky since we’ve sold out every year, but the bigger the event gets, there's plenty of costs. The amount of money I paid out of pocket is … shocking.
Lorien: So that came out of something like a need you had. Like, I don't wanna be miserable alone. I wanna be miserable with other authors.
Does your work your creative work come from a similar place? Not misery, but some personal thing? Like I write about what I'm mad about. I'm pissed about this thing and I'm gonna write about it. I have a hard time coming at something with love and respect. I get mad and I'm like, "I'm gonna fucking write about that,"
What's the thing that ignites for you?
Jennifer: People always ask, "What's your inspiration?" And I'm always like, "I hate that question," because I'm usually say, "I don't know." but I also do know and it's never what people think it is. I bore easily. Again, I have ADD.
Lorien: I love this so much already.
Jennifer: So I started writing in high school to entertain myself during algebra class, and I ended up having to take remedial math in college because of that.
Lorien: Same! And I did not do well in college in the math class 'cause I was doing other stuff.
Jennifer: It entertained me. It kept me focused and that's what started it. And, I do often wish I could go back to it. That being the reason because I feel like there was freedom in that. Where you're just writing what you want without thinking or having all these other voices in your head, your agents, your editors, your readers, and your own voice. I feel like people would think the more books you write, the more confident you get, and I feel like sometimes it's the opposite because you have all these voices in your head that weren't there. And then on the same thing is, you're wanting to make sure that this book is not sounding like the 20 you've written before that. So you get hung up on a lot of stuff that you normally would not get hung up on.
Lorien: I worked at Pixar for a very long time and it used to be the whole goal was to write and make stuff that entertained each other and themselves. It was all just like, "What do we wanna see? What do we like?" But it's also like you have those other things in your head that are real and hard.
Jennifer: Anybody ever asks me, "Oh, what advice would you give writers?" And that the advice I always give them is write what you wanna read, because we forget that. That's not even so much for new writers because we forget because there's a lot of pressure. Even if you're self-publishing, there's the pressure of what's trending. And you may feel like, "Oh, I need to write this now” because this is what's selling. And if that's what you wanna write that's fine but, if it's not you're gonna kill the love of writing for yourself. A lot of people are like, "Well, how does that happen?" Sometimes you don't even realize that's what's happening.
Lorien: It becomes more work than art, right? The passion and the joy because you gotta have a little bit of that right up front. A little bit of, "This is fun," in order to make it worthwhile in the end.
I have a couple of questions I wanna ask you that we ask every guest, but before that, I wanna talk about fan theories and fan fiction. I love when fan theories come out because I'm always like, that's way more complicated than anything the author has put together so far. Like, it's so, like, intense.
Jennifer: There are readers who 100% know more about my books than I do. 100%. Like, because they read between the lines, and sometimes there is context between those lines. But, sometimes there's absolutely nothing between those lines other than what is written on that page.
Lorien: Right.
Jennifer: I mean, sometimes you can't escape seeing reader theories, but I've learned not to look at them because, A, I don't wanna be like, "Oh, shit, that's what I'm doing." They figured it out. Or B, I read it and I'm like, "Oh, man, that was a good idea." I'm always just blown away by the thought that goes into them.
Lorien: So we ask all our guests the same questions at the end. What brings you the most joy when it comes to writing?
Jennifer: I feel like that changes over time. Obviously there's all these different milestones, joys, or things you find changing. I think for me, when I talk to a reader and they talk about some of the things they were going through at that time and my book helped them get through that. I do think we forget how important being able to escape is, especially in this day and age, where it's like the world is constantly on fire. Sometimes you just need to be like, "You know what? It's not that I'm not paying attention, it's not that I'm not gonna do something, but I need an hour of not being like, 'What the fuck?' for five seconds." And I think we forget, as authors or creators, how important that is. It reminds you when you do have readers coming up and being like "This is what was happening."I find that brings you joy because it also reminds you of why you're doing this. Because even though I do get bored easily, and that started the reason why, it’s also because I wanted an escape and that was how I was able to do it. So I feel like that also has a dual purpose. It kind of reminds me to get back to why I started doing this in the first place.
Lorien: That's awesome. All right. So what pisses you off when it comes to writing?
Jennifer: When I feel like I forget how to write. I'm at the age where I'm hitting perimenopause, so I never knew what brain fog was and I feel like people can say brain fog, and you have an idea what that is until you have it. 'And I do think current events play a role in this because I am somebody who is very affected by stuff happening because I feel like I need to be paying attention. But I got to a point in the last year where, and I'm not joking when I say this, I'm like, "Oh my God, am I getting early onset dementia?" Because words are my life, and yet I'm spending 45 minutes to write the stupidest sentences, which is like, "I sat down."
Like why is this so hard? I was starting to get super worried about this because they don't talk about this stuff. They don't talk about menopause.
Lorien: You will get through the other side, I promise you. There was so much rage in it too, like the terrifying rage of who am I?
Jennifer: Yeah. Like I'm about to murder someone.
Lorien: Yeah. It's really scary.
Jennifer: And no one talks about it. So when it starts happening, you have no idea what's happening. And honest to God, I do not know why YouTube randomly one day, I had not looked at anything, said anything, but it started playing this doctor who was like, "Signs that are easily missed that you're hitting perimenopause." And I'm doing something, and I hear something that turns my head around. It wasn't the brain fog… it was itching ears.
Lorien: Oh yeah, I've heard that one.
Jennifer: Yeah, my ear had started itching. When I would go to my doctor for an annual there was nothing wrong, but it would just come out of nowhere, and I'm like, "Is it my headphones?" And then I started listening and it was one thing after another, and then I was like, "Oh my God, that's what it is." And then I finally understood what brain fog is. It's legitimately like everything is through a fog.
Lorien: Fog is too light a word for it. It's like industrial pollution. Like the '70s in LA before the EPA showed up. Like it’s New York in the '70s. It is an industrial level toxic chemical in your brain. You cannot see through it and you don't understand that you're in it. It's just terrifying.
Jennifer: And then you do something, you say something, you think something, and a second later that shit is gone like it was never there.
Lorien: Plus ADHD. It makes ADHD so much worse.
Jennifer: Oh my God. It worsens that! And it's like there ain't no amount of Adderall in this world that can fix this.
Lorien: You will get through it, I promise. Now, if you could have a coffee with your younger self, like when you first started writing, what advice would you give her?
Jennifer: Honestly, don't forget to write what you wanna read. Because, again, I feel like that's something we all do at some point in our career. We just start writing something that really, for whatever reason, is not what we want to be writing. People always say comparison is a thief of joy and I feel like this is also a thief of joy.
I think actually another thing would be when you have successes, whatever they may be, recognize that. Don't always go from achieving that success to what's the next thing I need to have? What else do I need to do? Because you end up realizing when you look back, you didn't celebrate any of this.
Lorien: And then you forget that you did those things. I find that I'll be like, "Oh wait, I did that really cool thing and I totally forgot."
Jennifer: Because you're so busy almost trying to prove yourself. Anything that's creative, because it's so subjective, it’s hard to find… What's the right word for it? Affirmation. It's hard to find that in something that's so subjective. I feel like that would be something too, just recognize when you've done something and celebrate it.
Lorien: Awesome. All right. What's your proudest career moment to date?
Jennifer: I mean hitting a bestsellers list. Especially since when I did, it was so hard to do at that time. When I hit number one on The New York Times that was unheard of for an indie book at the time because it was an in- independent book. It was 2012, I think, or '13, and because that book was rejected by publishers and a month later it was sitting at number one on The New York Times.
Lorien: That's a “how you like me now moment”, for sure.
Jennifer: And it happened so quickly that I was probably, I wanna say, one of the first batch of authors, along with Colleen Hoover and all them, where it happened. Like, they remembered and they recognized it. They had it on their desks, and I feel like that helped change some things because that's also was the new adult genre and at that time it was like they didn't know what to call it. It was one of the things where it's like, "Ha, fuck you. How you like me now?”
Lorien: That’s awesome. I mean, congratulations for that, and congratulations for all the books. I'm sure you're writing books right now. Do you write one at a time or multiples?
Jennifer: Yeah, I don't know how people do that. I don't know how they write multiples. I mean maybe scripts are different, but I feel I would just be so confused.
Lorien: Yeah, I wish I had the luxury of just one, but because I have to have so many things going because I never know. I would like to be able to just go away and finish this and then go away and finish that, but it's all very much go away, which I don't have the luxury of doing.
Well, thank you so much for, um, being on the show and coming and chatting with me about writing and your process and maybe I'll go to your bookstore one day. I don't know.
Jennifer: Awesome.
Lorien: I'll come out.
Jennifer: I'd love to see you there. Thank you.
Lorien: Thank you so much to Jennifer L. Armentrout for joining me today. Please read any of her books if you haven't yet. You will be totally hooked. I love all of them.
Meg LaFauve: The Screenwriting Life is produced and edited by Alex Alcheck. For more support, head over to the TSL workshops. We have a growing library of pre-recorded workshops covering everything from core craft, like character wants and outlining a feature, to the business side of writing, including how to navigate the elusive general meeting and maybe even getting repped.
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Thanks for listening, and remember; you are not alone and keep writing.
