Kass Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of The 100 and Light Years (a.k.a. Mallory Kass, senior editor at Scholastic). Supernova, the sequel to Light Years, is out now!
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Sarah Enni: Welcome to first draft with me Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Mallory Kass, senior editor at Scholastic. Mallory's also known as Kass Morgan, New York Times Bestselling author of The 100 series and the Light Years duology. Supernova, the sequel to Light Years, is out now. I loved what Mallory had to say about what inspired her to start writing in addition to her day job. How fan reaction to The 100 TV show impacted her writing, and her life. And what publishing books has taught her about the importance of positive feedback. So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: In my podcast I to start at the very beginning, which is, where were you born and raised?
Mallory Kass: I guess I was literally born in Manhattan, but I grew up in Brooklyn, so someone must have taken me across the river shortly afterwards. I lived in New York till I was 10 and then moved to LA, and spent a few years in Rhode Island and England and then came back to New York to work in publishing.
Sarah Enni: Okay. You went to school in Rhode Island and England, right?
Mallory Kass: Yes.
Sarah Enni: Well I want to get to that. But first I want to talk about how reading and writing was a part of your life growing up.
Mallory Kass: I don't remember a time when I wasn't a reader and a writer. My dad's a writer, he's a playwright and writes for film and TV, so I think the written word and oral storytelling was always a big part of my life. My family doesn't just do small talk. We weave tall tales and tell funny anecdotes that change with each telling. And that was never really an issue. My brother and I always knew the spirit of the story my dad would tell us would be true.
So that's something I think I've learned from him. I tell the version of the story I think is gonna be the most entertaining, which drives my friends crazy, especially if they were there when the original event happened. But for the sake of this podcast, I am going to stick to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Sarah Enni: I love that you were raised to have a bit of a loose relationship with reality.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. I have this tendency to edit stories as I go and punch up anecdotes. And I don't see it as a lie. I see it as respectful to the person's time that I'm talking to. I'm like, "They don't want to hear this."
Sarah Enni: That's fair. So it sounds like you moved from New York to LA for your dad's career. What was it like to have a parent that was a professional storyteller?
Mallory Kass: I think it's like any kid, you don't really know whether your childhood is other people's or not. So I don't know anything else. But it certainly was fun and endlessly entertaining and turned me into a writer. So I'm very grateful for that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Did you ever watch his shows while they were on?
Mallory Kass: So when I was little, growing up in New York, he was a playwright and some of my earliest memories are of going to his off Broadway plays. That I guess, in retrospect, weren't totally appropriate for elementary school viewers. But I think that totally shaped who I was, and how I felt about language and rhythms and communication. And then when I was a little older, he wrote for Seinfeld, which is why we moved from New York to LA. So I definitely watched that. Probably a little younger, again, than I should have. But I am grateful for that.
Sarah Enni: How did you like LA after being in New York? Do you remember how that transition was for you?
Mallory Kass: Yeah, I remember it very well. I went to a school in Brooklyn that was really already unconventional. We took puppetry class and had modern dance, and I just wasn't exposed to pop culture.
Sarah Enni: Oh wow.
Mallory Kass: And I didn't really know that there were clothes that were in-style or out-of-style or music that was current. I'd never really listened to the radio. It makes it sound like I'm Amish. But growing up in New York in the early nineties, you couldn't keep a radio in your car because it would get broken into, your windows would get smashed.
So I never had the experience of listening to the radio driving around, which I think is how most kids are introduced to pop music. So then I moved to LA and I guess it was a little bit like The Brooklyn Hillbillies, or almost a homeschooled kid going to a regular school for the first time. I had never heard of Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson or crop tops. So it was a steep learning curve for me.
Sarah Enni: That's fascinating. And also for some reason that's making me think of sci-fi stories, or a sudden introduction of a glut of information feels like. I don't know.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. No, it was like going to a different world, a different planet. Los Angeles in 1995.
Sarah Enni: Yeah right? The setting for Clueless... the visual.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. It didn't take me very long. You know, I show up in my baggy jeans and strange straight button down shirts and eight months later I'm wearing furry vests, and knee socks and...
Sarah Enni: Perfect.
Mallory Kass: Yeah, I loved it.
Sarah Enni: That's so interesting. And I think moving at that age is something that I've encountered a lot in interviewing people that write that age, because I think it cements a lot of memories when you have to make full on identity adjustments.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. You become really aware of how you present, and what parts of yourself to share with other people and what to withhold. And I think everyone that age goes through that, but when you're the new kid…
Sarah Enni: I know, isn't it funny looking back too? God, I was so terrified of being the new kid and never once did I think about how new kids sometimes have a power.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. You could've showed up at school with a French accent and no one would have known it was fake.
Sarah Enni: And keeping it up [laughing].
Mallory Kass: Yes, for years!
Sarah Enni: That would have been amazing. As a kid, was writing a part of your life as well?
Mallory Kass: I was a huge, huge reader. I got in trouble for trying to read a Baby-Sitter's Club book at my own birthday party in third grade. It was a beach party and that's what I did at the beach, I read. So I thought that's what everyone would want to do. I didn't write fiction that much, like out on a piece of paper, but I had a lot going on in my head.
I think I was writing fan fiction in my head that I didn't write down whenever I finished a book. I would imagine what happened afterwards, or I would put myself in these fictional worlds and imagine myself with the characters. I'm sure to my parents and teachers it looked like I was staring off into space a lot. But I was hanging out with my friends like Anne of Green Gables and Matilda.
Sarah Enni: To this day, a lot of my creative process is staring into space at various coffee shops. The baristas that know me well are like, "Oh, she's doing that thing again."
Mallory Kass: Yeah. I wish I had a good staring-off-into-space face. I bet you look lovely and thoughtful, and I look a little brain dead.
Sarah Enni: I don't know. I think I look a little upset, a slight frown. You know that thinking face is never the prettiest face. So lead me through going to school. I think you studied English?
Mallory Kass: Yes. English and history, which I actually think work really well for science fiction because every sci-fi novel is in conversation with some part of our history. It's generally, I almost think it's more about the past than the present. I'm not sure. So yeah, I think those worked really well together for a foundation, for a writer who wants to create worlds, and grapple with various issues that are plaguing our society.
Sarah Enni: What led you to decide to get, I think it's a masters that you have from Oxford?
Mallory Kass: Yeah, so I thought I wanted to be an academic. One of my favorite parts of college was writing my senior thesis and they gave you your own carrel in the library. And I wrote about female characters in British and American novels who have nervous breakdowns in Rome. And there are a surprising number of those as focusing on Middlemarch and The Portrait of a Lady. And figuring out why Italy and Rome, in particular, becomes a source of crisis for these characters.
And I had so much fun working on it that I decided this was it. I went to grad school where I found out that it actually wasn't the path for me. I was in this program with people you just knew were going to be the leaders of their generation and their respective fields. And I liked what I did. I was good at it, but I realized I was a little outclassed.
And also [pauses] not bored, cause I was reading these books that I loved and talking about it with fascinating interesting people. But there seemed to be something a little feudal about figuring out a new angle to talk about Charles Dickens or Henry James. And I really felt like I was grasping at straws trying to come up with something insightful and novel.
And then that summer I ended up interning at Scholastic for Arthur Levine, the Harry Potter editor. And my first week they gave me a pile of manuscripts. And at the end I wrote up my reader's reports, one page summaries, and then that ended with an assessment. And my boss, Rachel, read them and came to talk to me and said, "You know, these are detailed and comprehensive, but you don't actually say whether or not you love these manuscripts." And I stared at her, I said, "You want to know if I love them?" She goes, "Yeah, that's what you're here for." And no one had ever asked me what I felt about a book.
And that just was a lightbulb moment for me. And I thought about how cool it would be to have a career where your job was to find books that you loved and share them with people. So that's when I knew that I wanted to jump off the academia bandwagon and try and get into publishing.
Sarah Enni: That's incredible. So you were actually interning for Arthur Levine?
Mallory Kass: I was interning for Arthur Levine the summer they were probably working on The Deathly Hallows secretly, that I didn't know about, and then the next summer [is] when it came out.
Sarah Enni: Amazing. That's so cool.
Mallory Kass: Yeah, it was awesome.
Sarah Enni: Oh, what a whirlwind. And coming from England to the... there's some kind of beautiful continuity there.
Mallory Kass: I had dinner in the dining hall where they shot the Hogwarts dining hall scenes for the first two movies. And then suddenly I'm working with the Harry Potter editor. It was definitely surreal and a dream come true.
Sarah Enni: A dream! So I'd like to hear about, I think you started working as an editor in 2013-ish?
Mallory Kass: That was probably when I was promoted to an actual editor. I started as an editorial assistant in 2007.
Sarah Enni: Okay, got it. And... I'm sorry, I didn't write this down, but when did the first 100 book come out?
Mallory Kass: That came out in 2013.
Sarah Enni: Okay. That was around the same time. I'm interested, and I think my listeners will be interested, you join a publishing house, you're an editorial assistant. What does that mean about your day to day? What all of your jobs are? And what's it to rise to the ranks of editorial?
Mallory Kass: I was just supremely lucky. I have the best two bosses in the world. It was Rachel Griffiths and David Levithan who are both legends. And they just don't make their assistants or editorial assistants do a lot of busy work. It's always very much in the trenches supporting them with their projects. So Rachel in particular, was the one I worked really closely with for many years.
And I don't know why she didn't make me do more of this stuff, but I never did expenses, I didn't open her mail or scheduled her meetings. All she really wanted from me was to read manuscripts, give her notes, help with proofreads, route cover materials. So it was really a hands-on apprenticeship from the very beginning and really stimulating. I was never bored, which I don't think is usual for an entry level position.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's incredible. It's so interesting to have David Levithan here in this office and modeling this... being editor and writing books and running his own literary festival and doing whatever million zillion things that David Levithan does. But I think it's fun that this office is so about people expressing themselves as well. So obviously it seems like they were like, "Oh yeah, sure."
Mallory Kass: Yeah. It was definitely a great role model having David around showing that you can do both, but he makes it look so much easier than it is.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Cause he really makes it seem like a breeze. So you had the bug, you knew that you really wanted to do this, you weren't bored. What does it mean to be promoted to editor? Is that the official thing where you can start acquiring books on your own?
Mallory Kass: It really depends. It depends on your relationship with your boss and the needs of your team and the publishing house. Scholastic, I don't really think we have an official policy about when people can start acquiring. So I was just so lucky. Rachel was really supportive and I think the day I was promoted to assistant editor, she sat me down and said, "Alright, now you have to start making connections with agents. Here's a list of people to cold call."
And I'm just young enough that I have a little bit of the phone fear that the previous generation doesn't have. But I'm still much, much older than the people who can't look at a phone without bursting into tears. The idea of cold calling these agents was so terrifying and it was absolutely the right thing to do. So she really pushed me outside of my comfort zone, which is so necessary.
And then I spent the next few years as an assistant editor and an associate editor making those connections. Still supporting Rachel and her books, but meeting people and giving them a sense of my taste and I started to acquire a few books. And then I was promoted to editor when my bosses felt it was time for me to focus on my own list, and stop juggling all the things that an associate editor does, which is editing their own books and supporting their bosses on their titles.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's so exciting. I love that you felt so supported the whole time that's another thing that doesn't always happen. And it also doesn't happen… to stay at one company all the time, even within publishing, but certainly for people of our generation we pop around.
Mallory Kass: Yeah, it's so unusual. I'm coming up on twelve years and there are a lot of people who've been here for a decade and two decades, and I think it's a testament to the corporate culture and how supported people feel and the relationships we make. But I really think what decides whether you're happy or successful at your first job, is whether your manager feels invested in you and I was so lucky. Rachel wanted me to succeed. She believed in me as an editor and she did everything she could to help me grow and I will always be grateful.
Sarah Enni: Yay. That's so awesome. What, if anything, from your past short-lived life as an academic did you bring to being an editor and to those skills involved in editing books?
Mallory Kass: That's a really great question. It is a really different skillset. When I was in academia, I was really looking at the mechanics and the tools the authors employed, and never really thought about whether or not they were successful. It was what poetic devices is Swinburne using in his poetry, not how does it make the reader feel?
And so much about being an editor is putting yourself in the mind of that reader, whether it's the middle grade reader or the YA reader or whoever, and thinking, "How are they gonna feel about this? Are they gonna be excited? Are they gonna be bored? Are they gonna feel invested in the emotional stakes?"
So it's something you really, I don't think you can learn it until you would start doing it. I think every reader has these skills, and part of being an editor is having a really specific vocabulary for identifying what you're feeling at a given moment in the reading process. It's almost like one of those advanced yogis who, I don't even know if this is true, but I read once that you get to a level where you can feel all your metabolic processes, and you're aware of your breath, and your heartbeat, and you're liver function, and I feel being an editor's like that. I'm reading and I'm trying to lose myself in the reading experience with one half of my brain, and with the other half of my brain I'm being hyper, hyper focused on how I'm reacting to each line, each chapter, each plot twist.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that! I've heard that too. Specifically about the liver.
Mallory Kass: Yeah! Okay. So I didn't make that up.
Sarah Enni: Or else we read the same article and were impacted in this similar way by it. Have you ever, this is a very silly question, but have you ever had a book come across your desk that involves someone having a breakdown in Rome? I urge readers to send you manuscripts involving that.
Mallory Kass: That would be so fun! I don't think I have yet. Manuscript wish list!
Sarah Enni: Okay great, I'm gonna put it out to the world now. I love that you're feeling invested in this job. You are moving up the ranks. What is it that leads you to think, "Okay, now it's time to take a crack at this myself."
Mallory Kass: So I had never really stopped writing. I started writing fiction in middle school and high school and by the time I was an associate editor at Scholastic, I probably had forty documents on my computer that were starts to novels that I never finished. I sometimes never got beyond the second page. I think the most I ever wrote was probably twenty pages. And it got harder and harder the longer I worked in publishing.
And part of that is a time issue. Being an editorial assistant and assistant editor is not a nine to five job. No job in publishing is a nine to five job. But part of it was that the better I became at my job, which was to be incredibly picky and to identify problems in a manuscript right away, the harder it became to write. And it got to the point where, editors receive hundreds and hundreds of submissions a year, sometimes more than that.
And we train ourselves to know within the first ten to twenty pages whether we love something. And we generally know, even in the first few pages, whether we're connecting with the voice. And then I couldn't turn off that sensor when I started to write. I would write a page, read it to myself and think, "If this came to me from an agent on submission, I would reject it right away."
And I knew that that wasn't a good process, but I just couldn't get past it. And I think, in retrospect, I didn't realize that I wasn't reading first drafts. Even my authors, ones I had worked with for years, when they sent me a new book and it would be called “first draft”, their agent had read it, it had been beta read by their critique group.
Sarah Enni: Even when they write it and then revise on their own, every step helps.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. So it became really, really, it was tough.
Sarah Enni: How long did it take you to realize that you were lacking that shift?
Mallory Kass: Pretty much right away. I realized the creative impulse in me was still there. And this habit I have, that I've had my whole life, of describing events while they're happening to me never went away. So whenever I'm feeling something intense, whether I'm having a great time or I'm sad or I'm scared, there's a part of my brain that is always recording it and thinking about how I would tell someone about it later.
Sarah Enni: Interesting.
Mallory Kass: And that never stopped. And I always knew that this is the way I processed the world. And I would get ideas for books and want to share them. But yeah, I think by the time I got to be an associate editor and I had probably read and rejected at that point two thousand manuscripts, I couldn't turn that part of my brain off when it was time to work on my own stuff.
Sarah Enni: What was it that led to a change? What allowed you to move forward with what became The 100?
Mallory Kass: So I was talking to my friend and colleague, Cheryl Klein, who is a brilliant editor and is really, really great at helping writers overcome obstacles. And I was telling her about that problem, and she suggested that I get in touch with Alloy, it's a book packager. And at the time they were best known for Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries, and she thought that my voice would work for the pop-y teen fiction they were doing at the time.
So she gave me the email of someone there and I reached out, and they very kindly let me actually audition for a book they were working on. So I sampled for it, I didn't get it. And then a few weeks later I got an email from my editor, Joelle, about a new project they were working on called The 100.
Sarah Enni: And sampled, just for people who might not be familiar, means they give you the broad concept and you write a first couple of pages or?
Mallory Kass: So when it came time to audition for The 100, she gave me, I think a four sentence overview, so that's all they had. They had the title and they knew they wanted a book about kids with dark secrets being sent down to earth after nuclear winter. So I wrote this sample chapter, and in my original-original version, the characters were named after their crimes.
Sarah Enni: Interesting.
Mallory Kass: So you know, "Arson shot Chaos a look as Treason walked by." I thought it was very smart. They thought it was creative and very strange. So I worked on that and incorporated some other notes and then they ultimately decided that I was the right fit. And then I got to work with them on what became The 100.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. Did they have a concept or did you have an idea about... cause it ended up being four books.
Mallory Kass: Yes.
Sarah Enni: So how did you map it out? How did you guys plan for it? Did you know it was gonna run that long when you got started? What was that beginning process like?
Mallory Kass: So we plotted the first book, I wrote about ten chapters I think. And then, based on those chapters and the outline, we sold it to Little Brown. And then I had to write the rest of the book, and it was a two book deal, we knew that there would be a second book.
So when we were plotting the first book, we knew we wanted it to end on a specific cliffhanger. But then it took multiple drafts to get there. And the people at Alloy are so brilliant and I've learned so much from them about plotting and characterization and process.
And it was the perfect, perfect learning experience for someone like me who was so critical, and so precious, and thought every line had to be perfect before I continued. Because working with Alloy, I would write a whole draft and they would read it and say, "Great work, we realize this isn't working at all so scrap it and start over."
And it was so freeing to know that that is possible, and that the book gets better that way, and that you're never stuck. The worst thing that can happen is that you start over and it's not the end of the world. And working with them was this magic potion for me that unstuck all the gunky gears that had stopped turning, and the creative part of my brain.
Sarah Enni: That's so great. And there was another interview you did on a podcast where you were saying that also because you have a full time job and are working, like you said way more than nine to five, that also having another person to bounce your ideas off of and to help brainstorm. Like if you were stuck, you don't have to stay stuck for a week. You can move forward a little bit more quickly and efficiently.
Mallory Kass: Yeah, exactly. So the process changes for different books and different authors. For The 100 we would plot the book in a room together with a small group of editors, sort of like a TV writing room, which was so much fun. And we got done in six hours what sometimes takes a writer six weeks or six months, and then I would go write the book on my own.
But anytime I hit a wall, anytime I wanted to give up, there was someone to help me through. And also the accountability, it turns out the biggest motivator for me is fear of letting people down. So that was something else I needed to get over, that hurdle, where the first time I ever wrote more than twenty pages, it's because an editor was waiting for them and I didn't want to let anyone down.
Sarah Enni: It's good to know your motivator just as much as your skills and all that stuff.
Mallory Kass: Yes. Fear and shame!
Sarah Enni: Motivating unto us all. That is amazing. The other thing that happened before I think even the first book came out, was that it was sold as a TV show.
Mallory Kass: Yes. So Alloy is owned by Warner Brothers, which also owns the CW. So there is a flow of information back and forth. And I believe they pitched The 100 to the TV studios maybe even before it sold as a book. And they optioned it just based on, I think the idea, I don't remember exactly.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, super strong concept sells.
Mallory Kass: Yes. It may have been after my first draft was written, or they definitely had some sample chapters. So then that takes so long that by the time they were ready to start working on a script, I was already finishing my second draft. So that is what the producer and the show runner read to create the pilot. So it all happened before the book was published, but not before the book was written. So contrary to what some people believe online, we weren't writing simultaneously. The pilot was written based on my book, which is why the pilot is very similar to the first book. And then the show diverges from the books after that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Cause it's important to know for the TV side. They write the pilot, then you shoot the pilot, then it goes through the rigmarole of just figuring out whether someone's gonna pick it up or not. So you write and shoot the pilot. There's a big gap of time. Then you get the writers room together and they go bananas and do whatever they're gonna do.
Mallory Kass: Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Enni: So often I think it's happening, especially now, that the book is the first episode.
Mallory Kass: So there's part of me that wonders what it'd be like to be George R. R. Martin and have the books and the show align so perfectly, but it'd be so boring for me. I love that I could watch the show as a fan and watch characters I cared about go on adventures where I would have no idea what was going to happen.
And I really think it worked well. My stories were constructed for one specific medium, which was books, and that doesn't always work well for the screen. And I'm so glad that they had the freedom and the agency to come up with storylines and add new characters to make the TV show really exciting.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that. And I love that you get to sit down on your couch like everybody else and not know what's gonna happen.
Mallory Kass: No one believed me though. My mom would call me every night before the show aired asking me what was gonna happen. And I would say, "I don't know." And she'd think I was being coy or cute. She's like, "I'm your mother. You can tell me." I was like, "Mom, I literally don't know what's gonna happen."
Sarah Enni: That's so funny. She's like, "Why won't she just tell me?" I mean the good news, and I'm sure the somewhat disconcerting news, was that the show immediately got this huge fandom. It just blew way up. I think I was still really actively on Tumbler at that time, and I didn't watch the first season as it was happening, but boy I knew what was going on on that show cause there was just gifs aplenty.
Mallory Kass: Yes!
Sarah Enni: What was that like for you as the author? And also how did it make you... you were still in the midst of writing the books, but fans were getting so worked up about something that was really not in your control. I mean, what was that whole period of time like?
Mallory Kass: It was incredibly exciting and flattering and stressful, because a lot of the fandom was centered on the show and the characters that were created for the show. So it definitely kept me grounded knowing that a lot of the fanfare was about something that I wasn't directly connected to and gave me the space to focus on the books.
But yeah, it's impossible to separate it completely. I did start to imagine the actors in my head when I wrote, but that's not a bad thing to imagine Bob Morley in your head every time you sit down to write.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, there's worse, there's worse impacts. And every once in a while things would happen on the show that garnered a huge reaction. Did that blow up your mentions? Did it impact your life? Were people rude to you?
Mallory Kass: It definitely impacted my life. So in the books, the main character, Clarke, is straight. And spends most of the time, when she's not saving humanity, involved in an on-again off-again relationship with Bellamy, the rebellious bad boy. And in the show they made Clarke queer and gave her a female love interest, which I thought was so cool, and so important.
I think at the time there were just a handful of bi characters on TV, especially young bi women. And so it was so, so revolutionary in terms of representation. I just thought it was great storytelling. It made Clarke a lot more interesting in my eyes.
But it did create a little bit of a rift in the fandom between people who wanted Clarke and Bellamy together on the show like they were in the books. And then for storytelling reasons, and I think for contract reasons, cause I believe the actress had other commitments, they ended up killing off Lexa, Clarke's love interest on the show. That set off quite a fan reaction for a long time and that was really emotional. There was a lot of talk about the "bury your gays" trope.
And yeah, I was pulled into a lot of discussions with people who felt really, really betrayed. And it was a privilege to be a part of that and to be a part of something that was so important to people. It was also really stressful. And I think some people obviously didn't understand the process from the book to the show. They assumed Lexa was in the books and that I created her and I had killed her off in the book so it was my fault. So I tried to do a lot of explaining in one hundred and forty characters. That didn't always go well.
Sarah Enni: Right, right, right. I mean it's a really unique and strange and very modern position to be put in as an author who's like, "Ah! I'm doing something over here that's truly different." I felt for you in the Twitter sphere because as I was going down so many important conversations, so much truly good critical thought about how we deal with queer stories on TV. But I was also like, "I don't cast... I didn't have anything to do with that decision." So it's an unusual position to be put in.
Mallory Kass: And the one comment that hurt... I tried to duck out of it like a sort of oily politician. I would say, "I have nothing to do with this. I write the books. I have nothing to do the show." You know, "Don't send me death threats on Twitter." And then one girl tweeted, "It was you who made her straight in the books and wrote this heteronormative shit. So it is your fault." And I did not appreciate her choice of words, but I think there was some truth to it.
I had four main characters in the first 100 book who were straight. And that is not representative of my experience as a person living in New York. If you put me in a room with four of my friends, it is unlikely that all of them would be straight. And I think it was a missed opportunity and I'm glad that that was brought to my attention. I wish it could have been brought to my attention with different words but... you know, sometimes you have to face hard truths. And even though Twitter can be a nightmare, and people aren't always kind, you know there is a grain of truth to what everyone says. And I felt really lucky to be able to have those conversations with the people these stories were affecting the most.
Sarah Enni: And then you were able to kind of expand the character's worlds in The 100, within the next four books, cause you were writing them at the same time I think?
Mallory Kass: Yeah. So there were already gay secondary characters. And that happened way before people started sending me death threats on Twitter, but none of the main characters were queer. And that was a missed opportunity. And that is just not the world I live in and it's not the world my characters would live in. So that is something I fixed. I gave one of my main characters, Octavia, a girlfriend in the fourth book Rebellion.
And that was super fun. I think it's one of those instances where it shows a writer reacting to fan feedback, which generally we think is a bad thing because we don't want feedback from readers adulterating the creative process. But this was so important. And I'm so glad that I got the chance to hear what was meaningful to them and what was missing from my books, and try to rectify it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, and then by that point, you're four books in, how do you feel as an author? Did you feel you had more command over storytelling? Did you feel more confident with your characters? Just as in getting used to writing and being an author.
Mallory Kass: I don't think it ever gets easier. I don't think I have more confidence in my writing than I did. I think I have more confidence in the process. And I just know... I always, always love my first drafts up until about chapter six, and then I hate them. And then I really hate the second draft. And then the third draft starts to get a little better. And it's not until the fourth draft that I start to fall back in love with the story.
I've never run a marathon, but I imagine it's similar, where you just know you always hit your wall at mile seventeen but you know you've done it so many times that you can keep going. And you will not fall down. You're not gonna collapse. You just have to keep going. So I think I've gained confidence in the process, if not in my own abilities. More [in] my stamina, I have a lot of stamina now.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's something that you need to flex that muscle. And I think that's a good way to think about it, "a confidence in the process". So the other thing about getting four books in, is that you might, I'm guessing, have some kind of a routine as far as when you're actually fitting writing into your day. How does that look?
Mallory Kass: Ha! [both laugh] I'm a terrible procrastinator and I write it off as just saying, "No, I just have a really demanding day job." But I do have a demanding day job, but that doesn't mean I can't ever write when I'm on deadline. So I generally work on the first chapter for about two-and-a-half months because I still haven't learned my lesson. And then I look at the calendar, realize I am three weeks away, and I go into full-on deadline panic mode where I just start churning it out.
So I write before work and after work, and obviously all weekend, and on the subway. Places I have written include the car at a friend's wedding in the parking lot, I snuck away. I have written in restaurant lobbies while I was waiting for a table for business meetings. I just would excuse myself to go sit for ten minutes and write. I obviously have written on planes, and trains, and in friends' houses, and in friends' bathrooms at parties. When I start to panic and realize, "I just need a few minutes!"
Sarah Enni: Well I mean that is admirable that you are like, "Even ten minutes will help." Anything moves you closer to the deadline.
Mallory Kass: Exactly. Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Let's talk about Light Years. Do you mind, before we get into it, pitching that series for us?
Mallory Kass: Not at all. So Light Years takes place in a completely different galaxy from ours. And it's at an elite military boarding school in space, that for a long time was only open to students from the richest planet in the solar system. But when the book takes place, it's the first year that students from all four planets can attend. And so it's about class conflict and dismantling power structures.
But of course, there's plenty of time for them to get into trouble. Make-out in the zero gravity room... that's my favorite scene. And I had a lot of fun writing it. It was definitely inspired by Enders Game, which was one of my favorite books growing up. I loved the idea of a military school in space with these child prodigies. But I took issue with a few elements of Ender's Game.
One, they wore uniforms and the clothes were awful, and I wanted my kids to have freedom to have fun parties and dress up. And of course, the elephant in the room is that Orson Scott Card turned out to be a raging, hateful, bigoted homophobe. So it was really, really important to me that Light Years be really diverse, especially in terms of sexuality. And reclaim the space school genre for everyone and show that it doesn't matter who you love, you can still thrive in a military boarding school in space.
Sarah Enni: Yes, I love that. It reminds me too of Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century.
Mallory Kass: Yes! Oh my god!
Sarah Enni: Which is one of my favorite things. It was pivotal for a lot of us. A lot of us carry that show around with us.
Mallory Kass: I have a brand new pitch. I really appreciate that. Now I don't have to mention Ender's Game at all.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, right!
Mallory Kass: It's Zenon!
Sarah Enni: Zenon for a new generation. Which I think she did a lot for our generation, of being like, "Well what if you were up in space as a teen and it was cool? And you were just still dealing with cafeterias?"
Mallory Kass: Exactly.
Sarah Enni: So when The 100 came to a close, and that series wrapped up, what made you want to continue? Did you know you wanted to continue writing? What made you know that you wanted to continue working with Alloy? What was the process like of moving onto a new series?
Mallory Kass: I definitely knew I wanted to keep working with Alloy. I think they are geniuses. I've worked with a number of editors there over the years, and not only are they brilliant storytellers, they're also just very good people and good at supporting writers. So they have all talked to me and emailed me through many a crisis and have made me a more confident writer and a more confident person, I think. They're just the loveliest.
So I knew I wanted to keep that partnership going. But it took a while to land on the right project. I spent a year working on something very different that ended up not panning out. Which was in some ways terrible, and in some ways wonderful. Because I think every misstep makes you realize that nothing is as big of a setback as you think it is.
So it's like, "Alright, it sucks that I worked on this for so long, but now I know it's not the end of the world." And it brought me to Light Years, which was absolutely the right next project. And I had so much fun writing it. It took me a little while to come up with the setting. I mean, we knew it was gonna be this military school in space, but it always felt a little sterile in my earlier drafts.
And then I realized what I wanted to write about was space Oxford. So it was inspired by my time there. So that's why meals are in the formal dining hall, and you have to get dressed up, and there are snooty robot butlers who are always telling you you're dressed wrong, or criticize your table manners. So I definitely had a blast bringing that world to life.
Sarah Enni: I love that. That's also very unique, right? That's your personal spin on this. Cause a lot of boarding schools take place in the US where, I think we've all read Looking for Alaska or stuff like that, that's a U.S. boarding school or new England. So I love that you could draw on the old world version of it. You really gave yourself a hell of a challenge cause you not only had to come up with the world of that school, but all four planets.
Mallory Kass: Yes.
Sarah Enni: And once again, four points of view.
Mallory Kass: Yes. So it was a lot of work and I'm glad that I worked with such talented editors. In addition to the people at Alloy my editor, Pam Gruber at Little Brown, is another mega genius. And so, so good at editing sci-fi. She definitely made up for a lot of my weaknesses. She pointed out the holes in the worldbuilding and the plot, and it never would have turned into what it did without her. So I'm very grateful.
But yeah, a lot of Pam's early notes were about, she said that the school felt very real, but that the kid's home planets and the political system felt really undercooked. And she was right. And it took me a long time to figure out not just what these planets look like, but what the political situation is. What are the economies? How do they all interact together? And figuring out how this class structure worked. Because it's definitely a hierarchical world where there are the haves and the have nots.
And that is really interesting to write about. It's also really complicated and potentially dangerous. You don't want to oversimplify the forces that make our world such a complicated and difficult place to live in. So it's a lot of responsibility. I hope I got there. It's up to readers to decide.
Sarah Enni: Right. But there was just a question that was asked, I moderated this panel about worldbuilding at BookCon last weekend, and this woman stood up and said, "I'm a lawyer and I want to know how you..." She was like, "Right when I think about starting to build a world, I get so lost in shipping structures and the legal system." And she was like, "How do you keep yourself from going too far down the rabbit hole?" And the answer was like, "Go down the rabbit hole."
At some point you have to pull yourself back but you do need to know some of that stuff. The reader doesn't need to necessarily know it, but you should have some sense of a lot of it. So it was interesting to see NK Jemisin be like, "Well I give myself two months to world build and then I go as deep as I want. But then when that two months is up, you have to start writing your book."
Mallory Kass: You moderated a panel and NK Jemisin...?
Sarah Enni: [Pauses] It was otherworldly to be in the same room with her. It was crazy.
Mallory Kass: That is so cool. Yeah, it's interesting. As a reader and as an editor, worldbuilding is what I admire most hands down. And it's something I am not good at. It's just not the way my brain works. So I actually can't spend those two months writing family trees and sketching maps and developing Tolkien-esque languages. I'm not gonna do that. I'm incapable of doing that. So for me, a lot of the worldbuilding comes out of character and conflict.
So I have two characters. I want to keep them apart. There has to be a rule in their world for why they can't see each other after dark, or on weekends, or something. Or I need a character to have to have a reason to go to a certain spot in the world. I'm like, "Alright, so what are their daily rituals? What is daily life like for this character? What are their challenges?" I think I work backwards. The worldbuilding fills the gaps a little bit in the plots.
Sarah Enni: That's so interesting. That's kind of what Marie Lu was then saying. These two sides of the coin. Marie was like, "I write my first draft without really knowing, and then that tells me all the questions that I have to answer." Which is a great way to do it too, because then that does prevent you from just spinning off into eternal work of creating an entirely new planet.
Mallory Kass: Yeah. Which I so admire, but it's just not the way my imagination functions.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, which is important to know. What is it that's drawn you to continuing to write sci-fi stories?
Mallory Kass: There are a number of reasons. The cynical answer is that when you have a series that's been successful, you don't want to venture too far away from that because you don't want to risk alienating your readers. So after The 100, I definitely knew that I wanted to do something speculative so that it wouldn't be asking too much of the fans to read my historical romance or my free-verse poetry. And it's also just really, really fun.
I started working on The 100 right when YA dystopian was big and I love that. But it was getting a little dark and grim. And for me, sci-fi is so much more hopeful than dystopian. For me dystopian fiction is about how the world ends and sci-fi is about how do we rebuild? And how do we make it better? And how do we learn from the mistakes of the past? What new mistakes do we make?
And especially now, more than ever, it's nice to be working on something that allows you imagine different worlds and different societies and how people can bounce back from really serious mistakes they made as a civilization.
Sarah Enni: Yes, it feels like a ripe time for sci-fi at the moment. I don't want to ask any spoiler-y questions about Light Years and that series. But Supernova, this episode is gonna be released around the time when Supernova is coming out....
Mallory Kass: Yay! Hello future Sarah!
Sarah Enni: Yes, we'll all know the secrets imminently. Was it planned as a duology? Or is there potential for the series to continue?
Mallory Kass: It was planned as a duology. I think we're pretty happy with where it ended and I definitely feel closure. The characters, I'm not gonna say get the happy ending they deserve, but get an ending that feels wrapped up.
Sarah Enni: Good. That's awesome. Last couple of questions. I want to ask about the continuation of your editing life, and then I'll wrap up with advice. But how has becoming a writer yourself influenced your editing life and vice versa, do you think?
Mallory Kass: They've influenced one another in countless ways. It would probably take me hours to list them all. But one of the things that has become really clear to me is how important it is to give positive feedback. I never thought I would be this writer, but the first thing I do when I get a manuscript back is skim the notes for the smiley faces and the check marks and the "ha-ha's." It's the first thing my eye goes to before I read any of the other notes.
So I make sure when I'm editing that I give plenty of positive feedback, which is not hard for me because the authors I work with are super geniuses who make me laugh and cry in every chapter. But that was definitely something I became aware of when I started to do both. And I think in terms of how being an editor has influenced my writing life? It's made me, hopefully people who've worked with me don't disagree, it's made me really aware of other people's time and work-life balance.
And knowing that if I turn in a manuscript two weeks late, that is two fewer weeks the editor has to edit. It's less time the production editor has to find a copy editor. It affects manufacturing and design and it makes everyone else's life a little bit harder. So it's made me really, really aware and hopefully respectful of deadlines.
Though I've certainly blown past some in my time. And it's made me want to be someone who doesn't make someone's life difficult. I don't want to be that name that pops up in someone's inbox and gives them a stomach ache. That's my worst fear.
Sarah Enni: I would love to hear from you advice that you have for someone that's working in publishing, in whatever department, at whatever level, who is also interested in writing books. What advice would you give someone who is wanting to get started?
Mallory Kass: Get as much sleep as you can now because you're not gonna have a lot of time later. Think about what you want. If you are using working in publishing as a launch pad for your own career, that's fine. But if you really want to do both, spend the time developing the skills and really establishing yourself as an editor, as a publicist, as a marketer, and don't think that you have to do both right away.
I think learning how the industry works is invaluable. Getting a foothold is invaluable. And at the end of the day, having a job that you love, that provides a paycheck and health care, is the best thing you can do for your creative life. And so I would not try to rush. There's no harm in really developing a job you love, and a career you love, and relationships that are meaningful, and don't worry about when the first book comes out.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's a really great perspective on it. That it's not a race. A lot of people feel an external pressure that truly doesn't exist. That goes for people working in publishing and just anyone writing on their own in their spare time.
Mallory Kass: And you can see there are plenty of twenty-two-year-old’s who write brilliant books, but you can tell when someone's debut is something that has been germinating in their imagination and informed by their life experiences. I think it brings the storytelling to a whole new level.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I totally agree. This has been such a delight. Thank you so much for your time today.
Mallory Kass: Thank you Sarah. It's such a treat.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Mallory/Kass. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @KassMorganbooks and follow me on both @SarahEnni (Instagram and Twitter) and the show @firstdraftpod (Twitter and Instagram). For links to everything that was talked about in this episode, check out the show notes, which are available @firstdraftpod.com. This week's show notes reveal my favorite Janet Jackson albums. So definitely worth checking out.
Do you have any writing or creativity questions that you would like me and a guest to answer in an upcoming episode? I sure hope so. And if you have a question, I'd love for you to call and leave a voicemail at 818-533-1998. I really would value getting feedback from First Draft listeners, especially those of you who are engaged in your own creative projects and maybe come to the show for a little bit of inspiration.
I love to hear from you personally and get a sense if there's any feedback I can give. I plan on bringing really, really smart and fun guests, fellow authors, to come on and give advice too. So if you have any questions, please go ahead. Again, that number is 818-533-1998.
If you enjoyed the show today, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. And if you have a few extra minutes, leaving a rating or review on iTunes would be enormously helpful. I'm gonna click on over and read a recent five star review that was left by Han2010000. I feel like that Flight of the Concord song, where they rap in binary code. The true joy.
Han says this is the best podcast for writers. Five Stars. "I've been listening to this podcast for a few years, almost every episode. The writers are so varied and it's the best thing to hear them talk about their books and the writing process. As a writer and reader, I've learned so much and enjoy this podcast so much." That is incredibly sweet, Han.
It means so much to me to hear that you've been following the podcast for years. That is wild. I am so grateful that you still find it useful and that you're still enjoying it. It's still a joy for me to do. And to hear that other people have stuck around and have come along with the evolution of the show, it just really is touching.
And Han, it sounds like you're a regular listener, so you've heard this before, but by leaving this review and taking a few minutes out of your day to do that, you're really helping First Draft grow organically. These reviews and five-star ratings put First Draft in the recommended area with a bunch of other writing podcasts, and just help people find us. Cause there's a million-and-one podcasts out there. So Han, I am so, so, so appreciative. Thank you.
Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant, Tasneem Daud and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you beach readers for listening.
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