First Draft Episode #233: Maggie Levin

Maggie Levin is a director & screenwriter with rock n’ roll roots.  She recently completed her debut feature My Valentine for Hulu &  Blumhouse’s Into the Dark horror anthology series. She worked as a director and staff writer on Season 2 of Miss 2059, and is  the director of The Friendless Five and  more.

This episode of First Draft is brought to you by Lovely War, the national bestselling historical young adult novel by Julie Berry, now available in paperback.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Maggie’s dad is Tony Levin, bass player for Peter Gabriel and King Crimson
• Robert Lepage directed Peter Gabriel’s tours, and is well known for the Cirque du Soleil show Ka
• Bard College at Simon’s Rock
• Marie Kondo (author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up) does not apply to Maggie’s childhood journals
• The Writer’s Panel with Ben Blacker (formerly The Nerdist Writer’s Panel) is a great podcast to listen to for screenwriters, as is Scriptnotes with Craig Mazin and John August (listen to his First Draft podcast here!)
• Lovesick is the first short she wrote and starred in, and Braeden Herrera directed it
• Melanie Recker, creator of digital series, “The Friendless Five”
• The Queen (film)
• Diva, a short directed by Maggie and starred Helen Highfield
• Dangerous Liaisons (film)
• Anna Akana, actress, filmmaker, singer, musician, author, and comedian widely known for her YouTube channel. She is also a frequent collaborator with Maggie.
• Scott Derickson, writer and director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and writer, director, and producer on the new Snowpiercer TV show, and C. Robert Cargill, author of books like Dreams and Shadows, and screenwriter of Sinister, Sinister 2, and Doctor Strange, were producers on My Valentine, along with Blumhouse.

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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First Draft Episode #232: Maureen Johnson

Maureen Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of several YA novels, including 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Suite Scarlett, The Name of the Star, and Truly Devious: A Mystery. She has also done collaborative works, such as Let It Snow (with John Green and Lauren Myracle), and The Bane Chronicles (with Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan).

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Something Queer series, written by Elizabeth Levy and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein, included Something Queer is Going On (A Mystery), Something Queer at the Library, Something Queer in Outer Space, and more
• The Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol
• One day Maureen plans to pursue writing non-fiction and humorous essays, like David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames
• Maureen’s friend and agent is Kate Testerman with KT Literary
• Janklow & Nesbit Associates is the literary agency where Kate worked her way up before moving and forming her own agency
• Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashears and Sarah Dessen books, including Saint Anything, Once and For All, and her newest, The Rest of the Story  (hear Sarah Dessen’s episode of First Draft here) were the only YA books around when Maureen started watching
• After John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars was turned into a movie by the same name, his other books Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska were also optioned and turned into a movie and TV show. Then came Let It Snow with Lauren Myracle and Maureen Jonhson, now available on Netflix!
• Some of the crew of YA writers who wrote with Maureen in New York when they were beginning their careers included: John Green; Emily Jenkins a.k.a. E. Lockhart, author of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks; We Were Liars, and the forthcoming Again Again; Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Mortal Instruments series, The Dark Artifices series, and the forthcoming Chain of Gold, which kicks off the Last Hours series; Robin Wasserman, author of Girls on Fire, and the forthcoming Mother Daughter Widow Wife (listen to her First Draft episode here); Holly Black, author of The Cruel Prince series, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and more (listen to her First Draft episode here); Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and Leviathan; Justine Larbalestier, author of Liar.
• I can’t miss an opportunity to dig at the ending of Lost
• Knives Out is a great example of a mystery. Go watch Knives Out!

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode #231: Marie Lu and Sarah Enni open the mailbag!

Marie Lu is is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Legend trilogy, The Young Elites trilogy, the Warcross duology, and more. Her newest book, a historical YA fantasy, The Kingdom of Back, comes out March 3, and Skyhunter will be out in fall 2020!

The presenting sponsor for this episode is The Slow Novel Lab, a six-week online writing and creativity course developed and taught by bestselling and award-winning novelist Nina LaCour (listen to her First Draft episodes here and here). The next six-week session of The Slow Novel Lab begins on February 16th, and you can enroll today by going to NinaLaCour.com.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• You can hear Marie talk about the inspiration for Kingdom of Back in our very first interview back in 2014! (And don’t miss her 2017 First Draft interview ahead of the release of Warcross)

• Marie’s agent is Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency LLC

• Marie sold Kingdom of Back to an editor she’s worked with before, Jenn Besser, Senior Vice President and Publishing Director, Roaring Brook Press, Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, First Second Books

• BTS’s performance on Saturday Night Live

• Maurene Goo (hear her First Draft interviews here, here, and here) is one of the people who inspired me to better quantify my to-do list!

• I love Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting hosted by John August (listen to his First Draft interview here) and Craig Mazin. On a recent episode, “How to Write a Movie,” Craig walks through his structure for a story.

• Marie and I talk about using documents, text conversations, or other non-prose elements to explain things that your first-person character may not know. An example I use is The Chosen Ones, the new book by Veronica Roth (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here), which uses government documents to fill in world-building.

   

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

First Draft Episode #230: Miranda Popkey

Miranda Popkey, essayist and debut author of Topics of Conversation.

The presenting sponsor for this episode is The Slow Novel Lab, a six-week online writing and creativity course developed and taught by bestselling and award-winning novelist Nina LaCour (listen to her First Draft episodes here and here). The next six-week session of The Slow Novel Lab begins on February 16th, and you can enroll today by going to NinaLaCour.com.

This episode was brought to you in part by Adeline’s Aria by Laynie Bynum, the first in her new Infernal Echo series, out Jan. 28 from Fire and Ice YA!

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Miranda is best friends with Zan Romanoff, author of A Song to Take the World Apart, Grace and the Fever, and the forthcoming Look (listen to her First Draft interview here, and her mailbag episode here!). You can read them write about their friendship in The Atlantic’s Friendship Files here, and in the Two Bossy Dames newsletter here (and they shout out First Draft, too!)

• At her dad’s house, Miranda read whatever was around, including such “dad” trope classics as David McCullough’s Truman. However, Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power was a little too much for her as a young reader (but she loves the Caro books on Johnson now, which also includes Master of the Senate and Means of Ascent)

• Mysteries have always been a particular favorite for Miranda, especially—as a young reader—Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene and Agatha Christie (the Hercule Poirots, not the Miss Marple, please). But she was also very into Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood series.

• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (and the movie) were Miranda’s “Oh… sex!” moments… mine was Anne Rice Interview with a Vampire (and the movie)

• A famous creative writing course at Yale was “Daily Themes”

• Anne Fadiman (author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir) is a creative nonfiction professor at Yale

• Poet Louise Gluck (author of Faithful and Virtuous Night: Poems) was Miranda’s Poetry teacher at Yale, and later in Miranda’s professional life Louise encouraged Miranda to write fiction

• Among the professors teaching at Washington University are more experimental writers like Kathryn Davis, author of Duplex: A Novel and The Silk Road: A Novel, and Danielle Dutton, author of Margaret the First: A Novel and Sprawl

• Dorothy, A Publishing Project is run by Danielle Dutton and her husband, fellow author and Washington University professor Martin Riker

• Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy (Outline, Transit, and Kudos) was a major inspiration for MIranda as she chose to break traditional storytelling mold by writing a series of conversations

• Miranda read Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald in her MFA program, and was interested in how Sebald experimented with the “slippage of the narrative ‘I’”

• Ben Marcus, author of Notes From the Fog: Stories, while he was a visiting professor at Washington University, encouraged Miranda to turn a series of short stories into a novel, which became Topics of Conversation

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode #229: Chani Nicholas

Chani Nicholas is a Webby award-winning astrologer, and the New York Times bestselling author of You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• As a kid, Chani loved: Judy Blume, author of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever; Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye and Beloved; Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; and Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

• Demetra George, author of Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand and Interpret Your Own Birth Chart was Chani’s teacher in learning traditional astrology

• Christopher Renstrom is an astrologer and historian, and author of Ruling Planets: Your Astrological Guide to Life’s Ups and Downs

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode #217: Stuart Gibbs

Stuart Gibbs, New York Times bestselling author of the Spy School series, the FunJungle series, the Moon Base Alpha series, and The Last Musketeer series. His newest series kicked off in 2019 with Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation. The newest FunJungle book, Tyrannosaurus Wrecks, is out March 24, and Spy School Revolution will come out in fall 2020.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The life path of MIchael Crichton, who studied to become a doctor, was an influence on Stuart in college. After two days into pre-med, though, he decided to focus on biology.

• The capybara is the world’s largest rodent

• Jennifer Joel is now Co-Head of the Publishing Department at ICM

• Jean Claude Van Damme is a Belgian artist and martial artist who made many action films, like Bloodsport (definitely listen to the How Did This Get Made episode - one of the best HDTGM ever), Street Fighter (omg this How Did This Get Made episode - What is a Street Figher?! iconic), Timecop (listen to the How Did This Get Made episode), and The Quest (listen to that How Did This Get Made episode)

• Stuart co-wrote the movie See Spot Run with Craig Titley (who wrote the film adaptation of Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the film adaptation of The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan)

• Lucy Ruth Cummins, writer and illustrator, and executive art director of picture books, middle grade books, and young adult novels for Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, and Paula Wiseman books, is responsible for many of Stuart’s incredible covers, including the FunJungle covers

• Stuart explains that Quentin Tarantino, writer and director of films like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, is given the freedom to wander and explore in his movies, but most screenwriters aren’t.

• Daniel Ehrenhaft, author of The Last Dog on Earth, 10 Things to Do Before I Die, and more, Vice President and Editorial Director at Soho Teen, and guitarist in Tiger Beat, recruited Stuart to write The Last Musketeer series.

• Moonraker was the first James Bond movie that Stuart ever saw. It changed his world! The story Stuart wrote as a kid about Jimmy Bond, James Bond’s son, was called The Kid with the Golden Water Pistol, a riff on The Man With the Golden Gun

• The Mission Impossible films have taken over for James Bond, in a way

• Stuart wrote Space Case and the Moon Base Alpha series with the help of his good friend, astronaut Garrett Reisman

• Stuart had the instinct that he couldn’t write a book set on Mars, because it would need to have such a scientific basis. His instinct was right because shortly after, Andy Weir published The Martian (listen to Andy Weir’s episode of First Draft here)

   

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode #227: Courtenay Hameister

Courtenay Hameister, debut author of memoir Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went From Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things, and former host, co-producer and head writer of Live Wire Radio.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Books by Beverly Cleary (author of Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Beezus and Ramona, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle) and and Judy Blume (author of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, Forever, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing) and The Crystal Cave series by Mary Stewart were some of Courtenay’s favorites growing up

• Create More, Fear Less is an organization in Portland Courtenay volunteers with that works with anxious kids

• While Courtenay went to New York University, she had the chance to work with legendary comedy group The State. The State — made up of Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter, and David Wain — was formed in 1998 and had a self-titled comedy sketch show on MTV from 1992-1995. You can learn more about the history of the group in The Union of the State by Corey Stulce.

• Members of The State went on to create Reno 911, which is coming back!

• “The 7,000 Dollar Pyramid,” is one of The State’s sketches that Courtenay remembers Robert Ben Garant writing

• Writing Movies For Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office, and You Can, Too! by former State members and co-writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant

• The Joan Didion quote Courtenay paraphrases is, “I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

• Some of Courtenay’s favorite guests from her many years of hosting Live Wire include: comedian, storyteller, director and actor Mike Birbiglia, who is best known for Sleepwalk With Me, which was also a comedy special and a New York Times bestselling book, Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories, and his new comedy special, The New One is also going to be a book, coming out in May 20202, The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad; Carrie Brownstein, guitarist with Sleater-Kinney (who have a new CD in 2019, The Center Won’t Hold), co-creator and writer of TV show Portlandia, and author of memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl; director Todd Haynes (who has directed Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven, and this year’s Dark Waters; Cheryl Strayed, author of Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar and memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail; and David Rakoff, humorist and author of Fraud: Essays, Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems

• Courtenay’s friend Daniel H. Wilson wrote Robopocalypse: A Novel (which was optioned by Steven Spielberg, but after some delays has now been thrown over to Michael Bay) was the one who introduced Courtenay to his agent, Laurie Fox, who is an author in her own right, of The Lost Girls: A Novel and My Sister From the Black Lagoon: A Novel of My Life.

• Jean Garnett at Little, Brown was Courtenay’s editor

• Courtenay super recommends Sleepwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer (and, oh my god, would you look at that, he also has a TED talk!)

• The Oprah and James Frey controversy which exploded over his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, is an inevitable reference point for a conversation about what “truth” means in the memoir category

• Courtenay’s recommendation for David Carr’s memoir, Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own, was so persuasive that I bought the audiobook that night!

• I admit to being a complete comedy nerd, and having recently mightily enjoyed John Hodgman’s collection of personal essays, Medallion Status: True Stories From Secret Rooms.

• Jennifer Pastiloff (author of On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard) and Lidia Yuknavitch (author of memoir The Chronology of Water and Verge: Stories, out Feb. 4, 2020!) teach a class called “Writing and the Body” that incorporates yoga and writing to enrich personal stories.

• Humor writer Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories: What Just Happened to Our Country? and William Stoner and the Battle For the Inner Life: Bookmarked.

• Writers Samantha Irby (author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays, Meaty: Essays and omg she has a new one coming out this year, Wow, No Thank You!) and Jenny Lawson, aka The Blogess (author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir and Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things), were bloggers before they had books, and they indicate the kind of conversational writing style that Courtenay tends to naturally align with in her writing

• Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2009 TED Talk, “Your Elusive Creative Genius”

• Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier Revised Edition: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story, and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book

• Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and her TED talk on the subject of introverts

• Courtenay admires Michael Ian Black’s evolution as a writer. Especially significant to her was his honesty in the memoir Navel Gazing: True Stories of Bodies, Mostly Mine (But Also My Mom’s, Which I Know Sounds Weird). His newest book, A Better Man, tackles toxic masculinity in the form of letters to his son as he goes off to college.

• I have always dreamt of being able to link to an article about Jeff Bezos’s dick pics (just kidding but here we go): this incident was wild - The National Enquirer allegedly tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos, threatening to release intimate pictures of him unless he paid up. Instead, Bezos released the pics himself and told them to screw off. It was wild. It was great.

• That incident calls to mind So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

• “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” the Modern Love essay by Mandy Len Catron, references Dr. Arthur Aron’s study, which included 36 questions to generate intimacy. (And hey, look at that, Mandy has TED talks about love stories, too!)

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do? Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

Thanks again!

First Draft Episode #221: Tahereh Mafi and Sarah Enni open the mailbag!

Tahereh Mafi is the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award nominated author of the Shatter Me series, as well as A Very Large Expanse of Sea. The final book in her Shatter Me series, IMAGINE ME, hits shelves March 31, 2020.

Watch this episode as a video on the First Draft podcast IGTV channel on Instagram!

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• I mention the previous mailbag episode (check out the podcast version here), which featured Zan Romanoff, author of A Song to Take the World Apart, Grace and the Fever, and the forthcoming Look (listen to her episode of First Draft here).

• I cite Morgan Matson as my hero for writing lengthy contemporary young adult novels, like the New York Times bestselling The Unexpected Everything and Save the Date (listen to Morgan’s First Draft interviews here and here)!

• I positively could not keep myself from mentioning The Four Tendencies again, Gretchen Rubin’s metric for analyzing how you (or others in your life) respond to expectations. Seriously, take the quiz already!

• Maurene Goo used Rilo Kiley lyrics before The Way You Make Me Feel in the epigraph because she got permission from the band

• A brief primer on how the Walt Disney Company has impacted IP law — though in 2024 that may be up, and Mickey Mouse could be in the public domain for the first time.

• Tahereh’s husband, Ransom Riggs—New York Times bestselling author of the Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children series (listen to his First Draft episode here - and heads up that the newest book in the series, The Conference of the Birds, is coming out January 14!)—has a very different writing style than she does. A marathon runner, rather than a sprinter.

• I reference one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of Supreme Court opinions: "I know it when I see it." The phrase appears in Justice Potter Stewart's concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, a pornography case decided by the Court in 1964.

• Room by Emma Donoghue features a child narrator, but is decidedly not a children’s book.

• When Tahereh wrote Furthermore, she was shocked to learn from her editor that she had actually written a middle grade novel, rather than a young adult novel

• Suzanne Collins is returning to fiction in the spring with a new Hunger Games novel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green brought on a surge of contemporary YA fiction

• Microsoft Word, Scrivener, and Highland 2 are all great options for writing software

   

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode Re-release: Libba Bray (Eps

(#18 and 19)

Libba Bray, author of New York Times best-selling series A Great and Terrible Beauty, Printz award-winner Going Bovine, and genuinely terrifying historical paranormal The Diviners, among others, joins me to talk about having her rock collection stolen as a kid, that one time Wes Anderson helped stage a play she wrote, and how growing up in Texas set her head at a certain tilt. The episode originally released on Nov 3, 2014, and Nov 6, 2014.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa

• Citizen Kane

• Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe

• Aaron Sorkin worked at the concessions at the theater for years and only heard dialogue for years and that influenced him

• Harold Pinter is a writer who knows when to take a pause in dialogue

• The Thin Man, Bringing Up Baby, The Marx brothers influenced her sense of comedy

• Neil Simon plays (Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park: A Comedy in Three Acts, and The Odd Couple: A Comedy in Three Acts)

• Singin’ In The Rain

• Peter Marks, theater critic of the New York Times and the Washington Post

• New York International Film Festival

• Mawkish

• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (and Tiger Beat has a song called “Holden Caufield is Not an Asshole”), A Separate Peace by John Knowles, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath were the only examples of “YA” that Libba had growing up

• Laurie Halse Anderson, David Levithan, Rachel Cohn, Francesca Lia Block (listen to her First Draft interview here), and Angela Johnson were some of the writers that Libba discovered when she dove into YA fiction

• Aaron Zimmerman, who runs the non-profit New York Writers Coalition

• Ann Brashares (author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), Melissa Sinnet, and

  Cecily von Ziegesar (author of Gossip Girl) were Libba’s editors at Alloy Book Publishing

• Sweet Sixteen

• Holly Black, Newberry Honoree and New York Times bestselling author the Spiderwick Chronicles, The Curse Workers, Magesterium, and her most recent series, Folk of Air (listen to her First Draft interview here)

• “Miles and Miles of No Man’s Land,” Libba Bray’s post about depression

• Stephanie Perkins‘ blog post about depression (hear Stephanie and me on a panel together in this First Draft episode)

• Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry

• Carrie by Stephen King

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do? Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

Thanks again!

First Draft Episode #224: Tim Baltz

Tim Baltz, comedian and actor, co-created, co-wrote, and starred in Shrink, and can now be seen on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. He has also appeared in Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and Drunk History.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Tim’s dad was a professional actor and he toured in one production starring Bill Daly, an actor who was in Newhart and I Dream of Jeanie

• Other early comedy influences for Tim were W.C. Fields, Fawlty Towers, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus

• The poet Robert Service

• The hubs of Chicago improv that Tim is familiar with: Improv Olympic, now known as iO, started by Del Close and Cherna Halpern; Second City, which featured some groundbreaking American comedians like the cast of Pinata Full of Bees, which was made up of Adam McKay (co-writer and director of Anchorman and Talladega Nights, writer and director of The Big Short and Vice, creator of Succession, and much more) Rachel Dratch (comedian and actress from Saturday Night Live, Sisters, and Wanda Jo from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver), John Glaser (comedian and actor from Parks and Recreation and Inside Amy Schumer), Scott Adsit (comedian known for 30 Rock, Veep, and The Goldbergs), Jenna Jolovitz (comedian known for MadTV and Greetings from Tucson) as well as Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris; and The Annoyance theater, founded by Mick Napier 

• “Breakups” was a web series created by Ted Tremper, who went on to co-create Shrink with Tim

• Sue Gillan, (actress from Shrink) and Claudia Wallace (actress from Shrink, Fred Claus, and The Oath)

• The Sopranos (TV Show)

• Seinfeld (TV Show)

• Michael Scott (portrayed by Steve Carrell) from the television show The Office

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do? Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

Thanks again!