Hello, again, friends,
I’m here to drop more great news into your inboxes like a cartoon anvil. And this time feels particularly big for me. We’re still working to make beautiful adaptations of Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation, and Book Lovers happen, and there are really exciting things I STILL can’t share on each of those, but I can tell you what I’m doing right now.
(Having the time of my life writing the script for Funny Story.)
Years ago, when we first started taking meetings about adapting one of my books, I remember telling everyone we talked to that I had no intention of writing the script myself. At the time, I’d only ever written one screenplay—one single draft of it, and just for fun—and aside from being someone who hates taking the risk of being bad at something, I also knew enough from my writer friends who’d gone before me in the adaptation process to know that a lot of studios and producers don’t want novelists adapting their own work. So partly, I wanted the adaptations to just have their best shot at getting made. And partly, I just doubted myself too much to even try. (Harriet hive, rise up.)
A few years went by. We set up more adaptations (including the Happy Place series I was FINALLY able to tell you about). I read more scripts.
And then, after the screenwriter’s strike finally ended, we began taking meetings with potential producing partners for a Funny Story adaptation. This time I felt sure I was the best person for the job.
We booked a week’s worth of calls, and right toward the very end (if not possibly the very last meeting? I don’t know; it’s been a while, and I have a terrible memory), I came out of one particular meeting and said, “Well, obviously it’s them.”
And it was. I’d never left a meeting feeling like that before. Writing novels is a very solitary act, and I love it so much, ten out of ten, wouldn’t change a thing. But there’s a special and rare magic that can only happen when there’s a meeting of the minds, when you find people you’re able to create a shared flow state with. Honestly, my most joyous creative memories are from moments like this. I think about writing Hello Girls with my dear friend Bri (who by the way, has another GORGEOUS coming-of-age love story coming out TODAY, which she wrote with our friend Jeff; you NEED it; trust me), holing ourselves up in a snowy cabin, sitting on opposite ends of the same couch, and writing at each other in a shared document. I think about my modern dance days in college, choreographing pieces as a group, based on what felt good and right, in that shared space.
I love, so much, the feeling that when humans are together, we can become more than the sum of our parts. It’s like, instead of having two or three or four brains, you open up all these tunnels between them, and there’s all of this extra space. Artistic synergy.
I left that meeting, with Ryder Picture Company and Lyrical Media, feeling that space crackling. I came away from the call feeling not just excited, but eager to get going.
And I have! I have a draft of a script, and as soon as I finish this letter to you, I’m diving back into it, because we’re all chomping at the bit to get this made it.
I know that every time a piece of news drops about an adaptation, there are questions about the other, previously announced adaptations. For example: what the hell, are those still happening? It’s a completely fair question. Hollywood is WEIRD. There are so many false starts and sudden stops. There’s a ton of hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, and then just waiting for months, and then finally, if you’re lucky, LET’S GO RIGHT NOW. A lot of projects that get announced never get made. Tons of them just sort of… quietly vanish and the public never gets to hear exactly what happened. Things fall apart every day, all day, for a million reasons. It takes hundreds of people and millions of dollars to get a film made, and somehow the money, the timing, the interests (of filmmakers and actors and crew members) all have to align in a near-miraculous way for even a BAD MOVIE to get made, let alone a good one.
But in another bit of great news, that’s not what’s happening here. Things are MOVING, behind the scenes for the other adaptations as well. In some cases, very fast. There just isn’t any more I can tell you than that, without getting in trouble. Trust me, I’m dying to. (I will at least affirm that right now I still have every reason to believe we aren’t getting BAD MOVIES; we’re getting GREAT ones.)
I also know there are always going to be really strong opinions on adaptations. It’s so hard to make room in your brain and heart for a slightly different version of a story you already love. We’ve all been burned before—I get it. I can think of one adaptation I intentionally never watched, because the book it was based on just felt too important to me, and I was afraid that after seeing it, the movie would replace the story in my head. It’s scary!
But like I’ve said before, I genuinely see my part in this process as being the readers’ voice, every single time I’m let into the room. And for the sake of full disclosure, I’m not always in the room. But I know that everyone’s goals are the same: To make something that stands alone as an excellent film, while keeping the spirit of the book as pure and undiluted as possible.
So that’s where we’re at. There WILL be more to tell you soon. In the meantime, though, I’ve got a couple of other fun, little things to share with you.
Last summer, I was approached by Echo, a company that’s made beautiful scarves for the last 100 years, to invite me to participate in their Echo100 project. Basically, to celebrate a century of gorgeous silk scarves, they’ve teamed up with artists, makers, and entrepreneurs to design limited edition scarves, whose proceeds will benefit a charity of their choice. The scarf we dreamed up is FINALLY ready and available, and $100 dollars of each purchase will go to the ALA’s Unite Against Book Bans Campaign. I love it so much and plan to wear mine all summer long on my head and pretend I’m in a convertible on the coast and not on my couch, pajama-clad and writing. Or maybe I’ll hang it on a wall. I actually still haven’t decided. Anyway, there are only one hundred of them, so if you’re a scarf lover, get it while it’s hot!
Next up, I wanted to let you know I’m going to be doing a very fun virtual book club with triple-threat Julia Whelan on Wednesday night at 8 ET. We’re going to be talking about a lot of things, but I’m especially excited to pick her brain more about her gorgeous, sensual, erotic, emotional romance audiobook Casanova LLC, which she recently released on her brand new audiobook platform, Audiobrary. Julia has a magnificent brain, and is so absurdly talented, but one of my favorite things about her is honestly how much she cares about making things better for artists, and Audiobrary is just one of the ways she’s striving to do that.
In the traditional publishing model, audiobook narrators don’t make royalties—which means that these actors are getting paid a flat fee to record a book and no matter how well that audiobook performs or how much money it brings in, the narrators won’t see another dime from it. Audiobrary aims to build a new model, one that will hopefully makes this career more sustainable. I’m so amazed by the work she’s put into this app already and amped for everything she’s got in the pipeline. We’ll hopefully get to talk about some of that during our chat, but for now though, you can (and if you’re a romance reader, MUST) listen to Casanova LLC.
And LASTLY, I wanted to give you a heads up that I’m going to be in convo in Chicago with my pal Calahan Skogman to celebrate the release of his debut novel, Blue Graffiti, which I’ve already read and is beautiful and melancholy and warm. You can get tickets to that AND a copy of the book here. (Shout-out to the readers for cross-tagging us until we had no choice but to become friends.)
This is, I believe, the longest grocery list I’ve ever sent you and I haven’t even listed any groceries yet. I’ve been liking having these little acai bowls at home.
Okay, I think that’s all. Except the eleven things I’ll think of after I send this. Sorry in advance for the inevitable typos and missing words.
xo,
Emily