High Anxiety, Higher Expectations on Real People Masquerading Inside a Novel

Interview BY DAVID RUTTER School in Barrington, she came to believe that writing would be the only thing in life that she would love and has done almost nothing else since. She had tried volleyball at BHS. No dice. She was a passable alto in the choir. No match. She had long hair then and dressed in indie music T-shirts while playing the Bohemian. “I was a poseur,” she admits with a grin. But she came bearing words that most teens understand well. You can fear the world, and it can defeat you, if you let it. Just don’t let it. You can tell yourself that you have nothing to give, and eventually you can come to believe that. But you are wrong. Look at me, she tells them. Yes, just look at me. She asks them to be as brave as “Tris,” the main character in three novels of future, hope, and doom that have swept the young adult literary landscape. Tris is not her, she insists. “My uncle says so, but I’m not,” she says. You get the feeling that she does not ONNELL C view his mistake as charming. But even if Tris is not Roth cloaked as a heroic, AN MC S artful dodger, it might be true that the girl she in- vented has come to teach the creator some lessons. They’ve spent more than six years together. As Tris PHOTO: SU grew up on the pages of three 450-page books, Roth grew up, too, at Northwestern University. Roth says the creations of her novels are not built High Anxiety, Higher Expectations on real people masquerading inside a novel. That’s not how an honest writer builds character. “You can’t Literary rock star Veronica Roth comes home to Barrington to really take a three-dimensional person and push share the lessons of anxiety, courage, and triumph. them down into a page,” she says. “They lose all the intricacies and nuances. You have to build characters HE BRIGHTEST MINDS OFTEN CON- the questions, or hedges. She is better now at fighting up, not reduce them down.” CEAL THE DARKEST CORNERS. Self- the demons, and she acknowledges that coming here The most important of the lessons Roth now un- doubt and fear lurk there. Nobody choses – even wanting to come here – is a good sign that her derstands is that perfection-driven controllers – “I’m Tdeep, unquenchable anxiety, of course. But souls are fight is worth it. a control freak,” she admits – can be happy only when complicated and unmanageable, The author of D“ ivergent” and the two more dys- they learn to surrender control. Roth, as does Tris, This abiding, self-defeating anxiety paralyzes topian science fiction epics that follow would come must learn to leap into the unknown and jettison hope. There is no victory to be had because everyone to explain herself to those who would most under- their fear. hates you. And you sort of deserve it. It’s a disease. stand her vulnerability: the teen students in the Bar- For a writer, that means doing precisely what an Veronica Roth knows all about the doom of Gen- rington schools where she learned to love writing but introductory college class in psychology taught her. eral Anxiety Disorder, which demands its victims could not unlearn to fear life. Those who are most afraid must crash head-on into hide in those dark corners. She has decided to come She understands them as well as anyone in the the beast that taunts them. For a writer, that means into the light and fight. world could because she was one of those exceptional handing off the delicate product of your mind, and If she is going to be a world-renowned and be- children just over six years ago. surrendering it to strangers who will judge if it’s any loved author – which she is – she can’t really hide good. and still be the person she wants to be. She wants to OUT OF THE DARKNESS Terrifying? For Roth, profoundly. But, also nec- be that person for her new husband, for her parents Veronica Roth’s smile is bright, warm, and she grins essary. “You cannot get better as a writer unless you and brother, but mostly for herself. easily behind her wide-eyed glasses. Her eyes are do that.” So, Veronica Roth, who has become a world liter- dark and her short, brown hair glides over her fore- So her first try at D“ ivergent’ was rejected. She ary superstar before age 25, came home to Barrington head until she settles it over her ears with a practiced had picked the wrong narrator. But her agent said in the first week of October to flex her courage. She flick. She is tall and lithe. the narrator should be someone else – a strong, self- would meet hundreds of people. She would stand She is talking to 200 or so high school students confident, but flawed young woman. unadorned before them, unprotected and alone, and about writing and how they can be who she is. The star of the D“ ivergent” series had to be Tris. share her life and her mind. She never blinks from When she was a sixth-grader at Prairie Middle That brilliant divergence from the firstD “ ivergent” 38 • Quintessential Barrington | QBarrington.com was grabbed by publishing giant HarperCollins barely four days from Roth’s hands. In the last week of her college life, she fretted how to borrow money for … And Just Wait Until the Movie Arrives graduate school, move back to mom’s house, and launch the starving artist phase of her life. But her book sold instantly. Her life was forever protected from priva- When “Divergent” hits movie houses in March 2014, the life of tion. Barrington-born author Veronica Roth will streak into an even higher The first two novels in her soon-to-be complete trilogy have sold more than a realm. It’s got “blockbuster” stenciled on the side. million copies and perched for months atop The New York Times best-seller list. Just as the three novels in Roth’s “Divergent” trilogy have been The rich, complex, vivid universes that come spilling from Roth’s mind have unrestrained literary hits, the movie has all those same signs of orbital velocity. Seldom has a movie been so attached to a beloved book and been there ever since she was a child. She found “Tris” when she was 18, but un- seldom has a book been so profoundly and personally attached to its furling hundreds of coherent, vibrant plotlines is like skydiving. Jumping 10,000 author. And seldom has a young author been so personally attached to feet from a perfectly functional airplane is not a natural act, either. And most of her fans. Roth’s fans are deeply emotional and dedicated. all, it’s intense, solitary toil. As opposed to merely having signed a movie deal, the “Divergent” In the arc of “Divergent,” she’s fought herself constantly, even sharing with movie is done. As Roth noted, signing a movie deal means only that fans her bouts with writer’s block and often giving up reading others’ work be- hope is alive. A planned movie can disappear at any point, even after a cause she could not stand how it taunted her. “One of the woeful aspects of GAD cast has been hired. But “Divergent” is going through post-production editing while the studio, Lionsgate, prepares to open the second movie (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) … is how it traps you inside yourself. Believe of its “Hunger Games” franchise this fall. me, I don’t want to be stuck in here. It’s a very tense environment. Some people Shailene Woodley as protagonist “Tris” and Theo James as “Four” read to escape, but that doesn’t work for me anymore, and that’s why.” carry the acting/love interest roles as the post-apocalyptic Romeo and Juliet. But the studio added insurance with Kate Winslet and Ashley NO SECRETS TO BE GUARDED Judd in the mature roles. There are few secrets to Roth’s life because she has chosen to make her life expe- As a concession to style, James was updated to age 24, rather than rience almost insistently transparent. Her personal blog and fan pages commu- the original 18. But Woodley’s “Tris” remains the teenager that Roth says she would have wanted to be, had she been given a choice: Defi- nicate her soul’s worst torments to thousands of fans. Roth stands at the center ant, brave, tough, anxious, and often wrong-headed. of a social media cyclone. At public events now, she often is treated as a rock star Roth, director Neil Burger, and his screenwriters worked in concert or movie diva. That reaction embarrasses her as much as it entrances, but she has for much of the movie’s Chicago film production. The Chicago streets no other way to fight the demons. Writing is essentially a private, solitary career in a post-apocalyptic world are recognizable. They all wanted Roth’s that eventually must emerge into the light to be validated. She is learning the opinion on their interpretations. That is uncommon accommodation. curves and blind alleys on that road. Once novels are sold, the original author customarily loses all control “I have spent many an hour on a therapist’s couch,” she wrote to her fans. and influence over the cinematic creative process. The link was nurtured for “Divergent” because, regardless of “Once I spent several hours breathing into a paper bag, and not just because it whether Roth envisioned the outcome, the trilogy is being advanced smelled nice.

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