A Conversation with YA Author Ned Vizzini
July 2013
One of my favorite aspects of the entertainment industry, or you know, life, is that love for one thing often spreads tangentially and enables you to experience other interesting offerings and talented individuals that you may not have otherwise discovered. As an ardent fan of Chris Columbus' directing and screenwriting (Home Alone, Gremlins, The Goonies, the Harry Potter franchise), when I learned he'd co-written a fantasy novel for children, House of Secrets, I tracked him down at the LA Times Festival of Books earlier this spring to check it out.
Appearing with Columbus was his literary counterpart, co-author Ned Vizzini. You may be familiar with the movie "It's Kind of A Funny Story," based on Vizzini's acclaimed novel of the same title. In addition, Vizzini is the New York Times bestselling young adult author of Be More Chill, Teen Angst? Naaah..., and his most recent works, The Other Normals (Sept. 2012) and House of Secrets (April 2013). Coming in 2014, we'll be able to see him credited as an Executive Story Editor on NBC's "Believe," executive produced by none other than J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón.
Vizzini has a knack for capturing the voice and mentality of his adolescent protagonists with seemingly effortless ability, creating a time capsule wherein his younger readers can relate to fictional peers and older readers get immediately pulled back into their most delightfully awkward years.
In The Other Normals, Vizzini essentially poses the Shakespearean query, "What's in a name?" as we follow teenage outcast Peregrine Eckert and his quest to find identity and belonging while navigating between the real world and the one he's created in his fantasy RPG (role-playing game). "Peregrine," we come to learn, means "traveler," and sure enough, readers are taken on an exciting journey filled with fantastical creatures, adventure, and adolescent discovery. Woven throughout the pages are great "coming of age" moments, like when you start to demystify fears and assumptions - for instance, realizing that your summer camp crush is no more magical and unattainable than the "Other Normal" you befriended in the neighboring dimension. The juxtapositions between reality, perceived reality, and the imaginary and what we wish to be true make Vizzini's tale universally relatable. Vizzini writes, "Real adrenaline is magic," and I think you'll agree when reading one of his books.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Ned recently as a result of my panel attendance, and he shared much insight into his career and life as a writer and the new adventures fans can expect to follow.
When did you know you wanted to pursue writing as a full-time career?
It took a long time for me to admit that writing was my career. I started doing it because I enjoyed it, but I never thought it would make me any money. I was told by many people, including my parents and my teachers, that writing would never make me any money, and I didn't have the confidence in it to make it my career until I was in my late '20s, really. So that’s after It’s Kind of A Funny Story had come out, after Be More Chill had come out, all during the time that those books were published. First, I majored in computer science in college. I had computer jobs. [Writing] never seemed like a real option for me because the money comes in chunks. You get paid for a book, and then you have to live off that money for a while, so it was only around when I turned 30 that I realized it was the thing I was best at and gave up everything else.
Had you always gravitated towards writing in the young adult genre?
I didn't set out to write young adult books. I started writing when I was a teenager, so my stories were young adult stories, and when I got the opportunity to publish a book, it was in the young adult world. What I didn't expect was that world to grow so ferociously both in terms of cultural attention and quality of work produced. Young adult literature has changed a lot since 2000 when I started, and there are real opportunities to tell exiting stories in that world. So while I didn't set out to be a part of it, I find it a very welcoming place.
Do you have a particular space you like to write in?
I have an office in my home where I write.
You've expressed your past challenges with clinical depression, suicidal thoughts, and the resulting temporary hospital stay in your semi-autobiographical novel It's Kind of A Funny Story, which was made into a well-received 2010 film starring Keir Gilchrist, Zack Galifianakis, and Emma Roberts. How were you able to overcome those obstacles?
I had a moment after I’d been in the psych hospital and before I wrote It’s Kind of A Funny Story where I was in my kitchen. I was going through my receipts, which writers have to do to keep track of their expenses for tax purposes, and I remember looking down at my receipts and out of the blue realizing that I wasn't gonna kill myself. That no matter what else happens in my life, that wasn't going to be an option for me anymore, and it was useless for me to think about anymore, because it would hurt my parents incredibly.
When you left the hospital and conceptualized It’s Kind of A Funny Story, did you purport to write a book or were you initially just journaling?
It was very deliberately a book from the beginning, and I started writing it after that moment in the kitchen with the receipts. I had to go somewhere, and I brought a notebook on the train, and I started writing it. I’d been struggling with a different book, and I knew having written a few pages of [It's Kind of A Funny Story] by hand that it was something that I needed to pursue and hold onto, because I couldn't lose another project. I had to keep focused on this one and finish it. I became very intense and devoted to it and wrote it quickly, but it was never intended to be anything other than a book for people to read.
Were you allowed involvement in making the movie?
I didn't have creative control, but I was made welcome and made part of the process. With the help of my readers, I picked one of the songs that was in the movie, and in one scene, the character’s wearing a shirt that’s my shirt, and one of my books has a cameo in the movie. So I didn't feel shut out at all. I felt lucky, not a lot of books get turned into movies. It was an incredible honor to work with such talented people. I felt like the movie was gonna be a different thing than the book no matter what, and it could stand on its own. I didn't get proprietary about it like, “I’m losing my baby.” I felt like my baby is getting a big boost in the world, because people will see this movie, and then they’ll see at the end that it was based on the book. How could that hurt?
Regarding the importance of mental health awareness, especially with the spotlight on adolescent bullying and societal pressures, what did you learn from your experience that you think it’s important for any age range, but especially adolescents, to know?
It’s important to be able to establish distance between yourself and your problems. That distance can often be established through humor. If you can laugh at a situation, then you have control over it. So if you’re able to look at whatever wreckage is going on your life making you depressed, if you can flip it a little bit and laugh at it, you’ll have taken a big step toward dealing with it. I think it’s also very important to compartmentalize your problems and not let a small problem metastasize in your head. It’s really amazing the way thoughts can snowball, and it takes effort to keep small problems from becoming big problems.
In It's Kind of A Funny Story, you create the idea of "brain mapping," an activity which protagonist Craig enjoys, drawing maps of landscapes that represent himself or his current mood. If you had to describe your own brain map in a few words, how would you describe it?
(Laughs) There’s a river and then lots of bridges, because I like bridges.
Do you encounter any challenges while writing?
It’s all difficult. The trick is to turn whatever you’re doing into procrastination. If you are supposed to be promoting a book, then you can procrastinate by writing another book. If you’re supposed to be writing a book, then you can procrastinate by promoting a different a book. Make your procrastination productive. You just have to be afraid of death and understand that you’re on the Earth for a limited time, and if you don’t produce this stuff and spread the word about it, then no one will ever care about you. It’s a terrible perspective, but it helps motivate yourself.
With your latest books, The Other Normals and House of Secrets, the sci-fi and fantasy genres are more prevalent, as opposed to the tone of It's Kind of A Funny Story. How did that shift come about?
The Other Normals was a book that I’d wanted to write for a long time. I loved fantasy books growing up, and I remember when I was in high school hanging out with a few friends of mine in the park, and thinking, "What if we were in a role playing game? Who would have the axe, and who would have a sword, and who would be the thief, and who would be the leader?" Seeing the world from that perspective is something that always interested me, so when I finished It’s Kind of A Funny Story, I found myself in a little bit of a trap because writing books about depressed teenagers is reductive once you’ve done it. It feels strange to just go back and do it again. I wanted to do something different and let my imagine run wild, and that’s what The Other Normals gave me a chance to do.
I feel like as a society, a world of "Other Normals," we're trying to encourage kids and adults alike to celebrate their individuality more and more and to question what is 'normal', and is there such a thing, anyway? In that spirit, what would you consider an "abnormal" or unique quality about yourself that is one of your favorite traits?
Well, I’m pretty abnormal when it comes to organization of my space. I’m pretty OCD, and I like things to be completed in order and in such a way that satisfies my internal structural criteria. So sometimes when I have something to do, instead of doing it, I’ll get through a pile of mail, and that’s "abnormal." Although I think actually a lot of people are like that, but it gives me great pleasure. I can’t deny that it gives me great pleasure to putter around and organize things in my life. In some ways, the greatest pleasure in my life comes from doing that.
You're latest release, House of Secrets, is co-written by filmmarker Chris Columbus. Had you been a fan of his work prior to collaborating with him?
I was a fan the way many people are, I think. In my generation, I’d seen Chris’ movies when I was a kid, and they were fun. They made my life better.
What was it like to collaborate with another writer?
It doesn’t make much of a difference whether you’re physically in a room with someone. That is how the television world works, but the world of co-writing a book/screenplay, it’s all coordinated via email and occasional phone calls, so I would say it was a very natural process that’s reflective of our times. We were just brains communicating over the Ether. (For more on House of Secrets - see Vizzini's and Columbus' presentation at the LA Times Festival of Books).
Aside from promoting House of Secrets, you're an Executive Story Editor on "Believe," coming to NBC in 2014 and executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón. How did you transition from novels to writing for television?
Writing for television is a totally different world from writing novels. My post-It's Kind of A Funny Story regime in New York was not suiting me well. I was trying to write a follow-up book and having a lot of difficulty with it. I had a friend, Nick Antosca, he invited me to have lunch with him one day and discussed a television idea. We'd been friends for years, but we'd never worked on anything together. He is a well-regraded literary horror novelist. When we started talking about this idea, I got really excited. It was a great way for me to get outta the house, get out of my own head, work on something different. After a few weeks of going to Nick's apartment and talking about this television idea, trying to write an outline, I realized this could be something really important. I devoted the next two years of my life to working with Nick when I wasn't working on my own book projects. Problems that I had kind of melted away as we talked about ideas.
After two years, we had a good television pilot, and then we moved to Los Angeles. I came to Los Angeles a little over three years ago. I began working on a career in television, and that meant writing another pilot, and it meant getting representation and getting management. It meant impressing people, and then it meant getting a staffing job on "Teen Wolf" on MTV. Then it meant getting a job on "Last Resort" on ABC, and now it means working on "Believe." So that whole process is the culmination of five years, but it began with a simple desire to work with somebody else and get out of my house and out of my head. We work as a team. I have faith in it. The first episode is directed by Alfonso Cuaron, so it looks fantastic, and he is a very amazing personality. He's one of those people you meet, and you just want him to love you.
You and your wife are parents to a two-year-old son. Has having a family influenced the way you write or your voice at all?
I think the influence of family is something that's probably gonna come out in subsequent work. I don't know if I've synthsized it yet. I can tell you that I can write fathers better than I used to.
As an author, do you aspire to reach any specific goals or achievements with your work, or do you not concern yourself with that?
My goal was always just to be a published author, and after that happened, I struggled with not having goals. The goal once you publish something, I think, just becomes, "Can you create a body of work that you can look back on and be proud of?" And that's a lifelong endeavor. So, I think that's where I am now. Another way of looking at it is I'm 32, and I'm gonna be alive for a lot longer, so I just have to keep making stuff because this is my career (laughs).
At the LA Times Festival of Books, you talked about the juxtaposition between the ever-advancing digital literary landscape and your opinion that despite these technologies, kids still cherish the tangibility of books. Do you ever wonder about the future of publishing or libraries and newspapers given the popularity of digital readers?
Well, libraries in Los Angeles, I have seen increase their hours over the last two years. I'm certainly not worried about the death of libraries here. I hear that back in New York, it's a different story. I love libraries, and I think it's very important to keep them in our lives to access information. I don't worry about how books are consumed. I think if books are consumed on a tablet, that's fine. I happen to know as a writer of young adult fiction that kids love physical books - that they like to take pictures of them, that they like to make marks in them, they like to carry them around and loan them to their friends, and that they fantasize about creating physical books. Perhaps in part, because a world that is so digitally ephemeral threatens to erase them, and they think that if they could write a book, that would really last. So the death of the book is something that people have been predicting for 500 years and doesn't concern me at all because I know that creative, young people want to leave something behind. I was one of those young people once.
What one book should everyone read once in their lifetime?
A book that I've been into lately [is] Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure by Paul Auster. It is [his] story of becoming a writer, and it opens up with this incredible paragraph about [paraphrasing] "in my late 20s and early 30s everything I touched turned to failure." Paul Auster really details how he scraped and clawed and stumbled and created a writing life. Anyone's who interested in being a writer could take a lot from this book.
Now that you're an LA guy, what's your favorite thing to do when not writing?
I do love living in Los Angeles. I'll be honest with you, I spend a lot of time at the post office.
What can readers expect to see published next?
"House of Secrets" book two, which we have a title for but I'm not allowed to reveal yet, is the next book project. In terms of future projects, stay tuned!
Appearing with Columbus was his literary counterpart, co-author Ned Vizzini. You may be familiar with the movie "It's Kind of A Funny Story," based on Vizzini's acclaimed novel of the same title. In addition, Vizzini is the New York Times bestselling young adult author of Be More Chill, Teen Angst? Naaah..., and his most recent works, The Other Normals (Sept. 2012) and House of Secrets (April 2013). Coming in 2014, we'll be able to see him credited as an Executive Story Editor on NBC's "Believe," executive produced by none other than J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón.
Vizzini has a knack for capturing the voice and mentality of his adolescent protagonists with seemingly effortless ability, creating a time capsule wherein his younger readers can relate to fictional peers and older readers get immediately pulled back into their most delightfully awkward years.
In The Other Normals, Vizzini essentially poses the Shakespearean query, "What's in a name?" as we follow teenage outcast Peregrine Eckert and his quest to find identity and belonging while navigating between the real world and the one he's created in his fantasy RPG (role-playing game). "Peregrine," we come to learn, means "traveler," and sure enough, readers are taken on an exciting journey filled with fantastical creatures, adventure, and adolescent discovery. Woven throughout the pages are great "coming of age" moments, like when you start to demystify fears and assumptions - for instance, realizing that your summer camp crush is no more magical and unattainable than the "Other Normal" you befriended in the neighboring dimension. The juxtapositions between reality, perceived reality, and the imaginary and what we wish to be true make Vizzini's tale universally relatable. Vizzini writes, "Real adrenaline is magic," and I think you'll agree when reading one of his books.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Ned recently as a result of my panel attendance, and he shared much insight into his career and life as a writer and the new adventures fans can expect to follow.
When did you know you wanted to pursue writing as a full-time career?
It took a long time for me to admit that writing was my career. I started doing it because I enjoyed it, but I never thought it would make me any money. I was told by many people, including my parents and my teachers, that writing would never make me any money, and I didn't have the confidence in it to make it my career until I was in my late '20s, really. So that’s after It’s Kind of A Funny Story had come out, after Be More Chill had come out, all during the time that those books were published. First, I majored in computer science in college. I had computer jobs. [Writing] never seemed like a real option for me because the money comes in chunks. You get paid for a book, and then you have to live off that money for a while, so it was only around when I turned 30 that I realized it was the thing I was best at and gave up everything else.
Had you always gravitated towards writing in the young adult genre?
I didn't set out to write young adult books. I started writing when I was a teenager, so my stories were young adult stories, and when I got the opportunity to publish a book, it was in the young adult world. What I didn't expect was that world to grow so ferociously both in terms of cultural attention and quality of work produced. Young adult literature has changed a lot since 2000 when I started, and there are real opportunities to tell exiting stories in that world. So while I didn't set out to be a part of it, I find it a very welcoming place.
Do you have a particular space you like to write in?
I have an office in my home where I write.
You've expressed your past challenges with clinical depression, suicidal thoughts, and the resulting temporary hospital stay in your semi-autobiographical novel It's Kind of A Funny Story, which was made into a well-received 2010 film starring Keir Gilchrist, Zack Galifianakis, and Emma Roberts. How were you able to overcome those obstacles?
I had a moment after I’d been in the psych hospital and before I wrote It’s Kind of A Funny Story where I was in my kitchen. I was going through my receipts, which writers have to do to keep track of their expenses for tax purposes, and I remember looking down at my receipts and out of the blue realizing that I wasn't gonna kill myself. That no matter what else happens in my life, that wasn't going to be an option for me anymore, and it was useless for me to think about anymore, because it would hurt my parents incredibly.
When you left the hospital and conceptualized It’s Kind of A Funny Story, did you purport to write a book or were you initially just journaling?
It was very deliberately a book from the beginning, and I started writing it after that moment in the kitchen with the receipts. I had to go somewhere, and I brought a notebook on the train, and I started writing it. I’d been struggling with a different book, and I knew having written a few pages of [It's Kind of A Funny Story] by hand that it was something that I needed to pursue and hold onto, because I couldn't lose another project. I had to keep focused on this one and finish it. I became very intense and devoted to it and wrote it quickly, but it was never intended to be anything other than a book for people to read.
Were you allowed involvement in making the movie?
I didn't have creative control, but I was made welcome and made part of the process. With the help of my readers, I picked one of the songs that was in the movie, and in one scene, the character’s wearing a shirt that’s my shirt, and one of my books has a cameo in the movie. So I didn't feel shut out at all. I felt lucky, not a lot of books get turned into movies. It was an incredible honor to work with such talented people. I felt like the movie was gonna be a different thing than the book no matter what, and it could stand on its own. I didn't get proprietary about it like, “I’m losing my baby.” I felt like my baby is getting a big boost in the world, because people will see this movie, and then they’ll see at the end that it was based on the book. How could that hurt?
Regarding the importance of mental health awareness, especially with the spotlight on adolescent bullying and societal pressures, what did you learn from your experience that you think it’s important for any age range, but especially adolescents, to know?
It’s important to be able to establish distance between yourself and your problems. That distance can often be established through humor. If you can laugh at a situation, then you have control over it. So if you’re able to look at whatever wreckage is going on your life making you depressed, if you can flip it a little bit and laugh at it, you’ll have taken a big step toward dealing with it. I think it’s also very important to compartmentalize your problems and not let a small problem metastasize in your head. It’s really amazing the way thoughts can snowball, and it takes effort to keep small problems from becoming big problems.
In It's Kind of A Funny Story, you create the idea of "brain mapping," an activity which protagonist Craig enjoys, drawing maps of landscapes that represent himself or his current mood. If you had to describe your own brain map in a few words, how would you describe it?
(Laughs) There’s a river and then lots of bridges, because I like bridges.
Do you encounter any challenges while writing?
It’s all difficult. The trick is to turn whatever you’re doing into procrastination. If you are supposed to be promoting a book, then you can procrastinate by writing another book. If you’re supposed to be writing a book, then you can procrastinate by promoting a different a book. Make your procrastination productive. You just have to be afraid of death and understand that you’re on the Earth for a limited time, and if you don’t produce this stuff and spread the word about it, then no one will ever care about you. It’s a terrible perspective, but it helps motivate yourself.
With your latest books, The Other Normals and House of Secrets, the sci-fi and fantasy genres are more prevalent, as opposed to the tone of It's Kind of A Funny Story. How did that shift come about?
The Other Normals was a book that I’d wanted to write for a long time. I loved fantasy books growing up, and I remember when I was in high school hanging out with a few friends of mine in the park, and thinking, "What if we were in a role playing game? Who would have the axe, and who would have a sword, and who would be the thief, and who would be the leader?" Seeing the world from that perspective is something that always interested me, so when I finished It’s Kind of A Funny Story, I found myself in a little bit of a trap because writing books about depressed teenagers is reductive once you’ve done it. It feels strange to just go back and do it again. I wanted to do something different and let my imagine run wild, and that’s what The Other Normals gave me a chance to do.
I feel like as a society, a world of "Other Normals," we're trying to encourage kids and adults alike to celebrate their individuality more and more and to question what is 'normal', and is there such a thing, anyway? In that spirit, what would you consider an "abnormal" or unique quality about yourself that is one of your favorite traits?
Well, I’m pretty abnormal when it comes to organization of my space. I’m pretty OCD, and I like things to be completed in order and in such a way that satisfies my internal structural criteria. So sometimes when I have something to do, instead of doing it, I’ll get through a pile of mail, and that’s "abnormal." Although I think actually a lot of people are like that, but it gives me great pleasure. I can’t deny that it gives me great pleasure to putter around and organize things in my life. In some ways, the greatest pleasure in my life comes from doing that.
You're latest release, House of Secrets, is co-written by filmmarker Chris Columbus. Had you been a fan of his work prior to collaborating with him?
I was a fan the way many people are, I think. In my generation, I’d seen Chris’ movies when I was a kid, and they were fun. They made my life better.
What was it like to collaborate with another writer?
It doesn’t make much of a difference whether you’re physically in a room with someone. That is how the television world works, but the world of co-writing a book/screenplay, it’s all coordinated via email and occasional phone calls, so I would say it was a very natural process that’s reflective of our times. We were just brains communicating over the Ether. (For more on House of Secrets - see Vizzini's and Columbus' presentation at the LA Times Festival of Books).
Aside from promoting House of Secrets, you're an Executive Story Editor on "Believe," coming to NBC in 2014 and executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón. How did you transition from novels to writing for television?
Writing for television is a totally different world from writing novels. My post-It's Kind of A Funny Story regime in New York was not suiting me well. I was trying to write a follow-up book and having a lot of difficulty with it. I had a friend, Nick Antosca, he invited me to have lunch with him one day and discussed a television idea. We'd been friends for years, but we'd never worked on anything together. He is a well-regraded literary horror novelist. When we started talking about this idea, I got really excited. It was a great way for me to get outta the house, get out of my own head, work on something different. After a few weeks of going to Nick's apartment and talking about this television idea, trying to write an outline, I realized this could be something really important. I devoted the next two years of my life to working with Nick when I wasn't working on my own book projects. Problems that I had kind of melted away as we talked about ideas.
After two years, we had a good television pilot, and then we moved to Los Angeles. I came to Los Angeles a little over three years ago. I began working on a career in television, and that meant writing another pilot, and it meant getting representation and getting management. It meant impressing people, and then it meant getting a staffing job on "Teen Wolf" on MTV. Then it meant getting a job on "Last Resort" on ABC, and now it means working on "Believe." So that whole process is the culmination of five years, but it began with a simple desire to work with somebody else and get out of my house and out of my head. We work as a team. I have faith in it. The first episode is directed by Alfonso Cuaron, so it looks fantastic, and he is a very amazing personality. He's one of those people you meet, and you just want him to love you.
You and your wife are parents to a two-year-old son. Has having a family influenced the way you write or your voice at all?
I think the influence of family is something that's probably gonna come out in subsequent work. I don't know if I've synthsized it yet. I can tell you that I can write fathers better than I used to.
As an author, do you aspire to reach any specific goals or achievements with your work, or do you not concern yourself with that?
My goal was always just to be a published author, and after that happened, I struggled with not having goals. The goal once you publish something, I think, just becomes, "Can you create a body of work that you can look back on and be proud of?" And that's a lifelong endeavor. So, I think that's where I am now. Another way of looking at it is I'm 32, and I'm gonna be alive for a lot longer, so I just have to keep making stuff because this is my career (laughs).
At the LA Times Festival of Books, you talked about the juxtaposition between the ever-advancing digital literary landscape and your opinion that despite these technologies, kids still cherish the tangibility of books. Do you ever wonder about the future of publishing or libraries and newspapers given the popularity of digital readers?
Well, libraries in Los Angeles, I have seen increase their hours over the last two years. I'm certainly not worried about the death of libraries here. I hear that back in New York, it's a different story. I love libraries, and I think it's very important to keep them in our lives to access information. I don't worry about how books are consumed. I think if books are consumed on a tablet, that's fine. I happen to know as a writer of young adult fiction that kids love physical books - that they like to take pictures of them, that they like to make marks in them, they like to carry them around and loan them to their friends, and that they fantasize about creating physical books. Perhaps in part, because a world that is so digitally ephemeral threatens to erase them, and they think that if they could write a book, that would really last. So the death of the book is something that people have been predicting for 500 years and doesn't concern me at all because I know that creative, young people want to leave something behind. I was one of those young people once.
What one book should everyone read once in their lifetime?
A book that I've been into lately [is] Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure by Paul Auster. It is [his] story of becoming a writer, and it opens up with this incredible paragraph about [paraphrasing] "in my late 20s and early 30s everything I touched turned to failure." Paul Auster really details how he scraped and clawed and stumbled and created a writing life. Anyone's who interested in being a writer could take a lot from this book.
Now that you're an LA guy, what's your favorite thing to do when not writing?
I do love living in Los Angeles. I'll be honest with you, I spend a lot of time at the post office.
What can readers expect to see published next?
"House of Secrets" book two, which we have a title for but I'm not allowed to reveal yet, is the next book project. In terms of future projects, stay tuned!
|
|
