Author Kennedy Ryan Won’t Mince Words About Her Ambitions

In ELLE’s series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we had the chance to chat with beloved author Kennedy Ryan, who released her latest New York Times bestselling romance novel, Score, this spring. Mere weeks before Score hit bookshelves, Ryan announced that she had signed a first-look deal with Universal Studio Group to develop and produce series for television—a rare business arrangement for an author new to Hollywood. (She remembers her agent saying, “Kennedy, I represent a lot of authors. None of them are being offered first-look deals with major studios.”) With Universal, Ryan—who writes under a pen name—will co-write and executive produce the adaptation of her novel Before I Let Go, in addition to optioning and developing projects with other authors and creating new original IP. She wants to focus, in particular, on bringing “underrepresented communities” to the screen. But fret not, fans—she has no plans to step away from publishing: “I don’t see myself ever not writing books.” Below, Ryan shares her best career advice, her thoughts on AI, and how she navigates the volatile businesses of arts and entertainment.

My first job

It was doing retail in a local boutique. My parents had never let me work during the summer in high school because they wanted me to focus on my grades. And then the summer after I graduated from high school, I got to work in a boutique.

I had gotten so spoiled because my summers were basically reading romance novels and pretending that I had been cleaning all day. My mom would be like, “Just have the house clean by the time I get home.” I would be reading romance novels all day, watching soap operas. And then the last hour before she’s supposed to be there, I’d be running around the house trying to make it like I had been taking care of business all day. So I wasn’t used to [having a job]. In hindsight, it wasn’t that it was that bad; I just didn’t want to be working.

How I got my start

In the beginning, I wasn’t writing fiction. My degree is in journalism. Right out of school, I was just doing grunt work, like press releases for nonprofits and churches and whatever I could get myself into. And it wasn’t until 2014 that I published my first novel with Forever, through Hachette.

I never thought that I was going to be a romance novelist, or even writing fiction. At the time, I was running a foundation for families who have children with autism. I was writing for Chicken Soup for the Soul and parenting magazines. So when I was thinking, Maybe one day I’ll write a book, it was, like, memoir or self-help for special needs parents. I wasn’t thinking romance.

When I started reading again for my own escape and for my own pleasure, I went back to romance novels in my thirties, and it was such a breath of fresh air. And that’s when I started thinking, Maybe I should give this a chance.

My son is on the spectrum and was very fixated on water at that stage in his development. My husband would be working at night, and I would take my son to this river in Atlanta every day, because he was obsessed with water. And as I was sitting by this river every day, this town called Rivermont started building in my head. And that became the centerpiece for the Bennett series, which became my first fiction novels, traditionally published through Hachette. And then, of course, I went on to self-publish after those four books.

The best career advice I’ve ever received

Be prepared to pivot.

I didn’t get my first book deal until I was 40 years old. When I realized [writing fiction] was something I wanted to do, it was not just about pivoting, but it was preparing to pivot. What I mean by that is: Even though I had a degree in journalism and I had done ghostwriting, I hadn’t written commercial fiction. So I started taking courses on how you write fiction, and then learning, especially in my self-published career, the business of writing. The intersection of preparation and pivoting, that is the best advice I have absorbed. Doing it again in this stage of my career—I never anticipated working in television—is a much bigger pivot for me. I’m now optioning other people’s work and really learning what it means to be an executive producer and navigate this industry.

The go-to career advice I give others

My artsy advice is: Know your why. I started writing, in the beginning of my career, without a why. I stumbled into writing; I didn’t expect [my publishing career] to happen so quickly. I was very green coming into it. I was looking at the market, and I was looking at what was selling, and I was looking at what people were telling me, and I didn’t have my own “why.”

A few books in, it all started feeling hollow to me, and I was like, “Why is this not satisfying? Why is it not fulfilling?” That’s when I really started looking at the way I’m made. I want to see people who are usually on the periphery—those identities, communities, and experiences—moved to the center. I want to see marginalized voices represented. Once I had that level of intentionality, it formed a blueprint for my writing that I think started right around Long Shot. And that’s been the blueprint ever since. When you figure out your “why,” it helps you not to compare yourself so much to other people, which I think is very crucial in this business.

My business advice is this: Know that writing is a business, and you are going to have to treat it as such. You’re going to have to build a team. You’re going to have to create an infrastructure. You’re going to have to learn the industry. Don’t take the fact that this is a business for granted.

Both [the artsy perspective and the business perspective] have to be present for you to build a career you can sustain.

Whether I feel like I’ve “made it”

No. I don’t have that sense of arrival. I do think that I believed that I would have it. It’s like, “Oh, my gosh, once I make The New York Times list, I can check that off and I won’t care about it anymore.” And I do still care. What I mean by that is, you do still think about it. There is still a sense that there’s work to be done.

My therapist and I talk a lot about it. We talk about the fragility of success and how there is a sense that, at some point, it could all go away. I am working a lot on my own and in myself to create contentment and satisfaction outside of other people’s metrics, outside of The New York Times, outside of sales, outside of accomplishment and achievement. As someone who is an achiever, that’s hard. But I think it will protect, in the long run, my peace of mind and my sense of self. Because I don’t want my sense of self to be so connected to things I’ve achieved that, when I stop achieving in that specific way, somehow I feel like I’m less than what I was before.

The hardest career lesson I’ve had to learn

You can’t be distracted. At a certain level, you have to focus on what’s in front of you—you have to focus on the work. The book space, especially currently, can be really toxic. There’s a new drama every day. I have had to learn to separate myself from that. Staying connected to my readers is very important to me. I still answer my DMs; I’m still commenting on all the posts when people tag me. I try to do that. But it’s being engaged with the people who are your audience and who are supporting you, and at the same time putting some distance between the toxicity that exists in that space, because it’s distracting and it can be disheartening. If I allow myself to pay too much attention to that, it begins to affect me creatively, and I have to insulate that. I have to protect that process. When it comes down to it, the story is the point.

I’ve talked before about how I’m very mission-oriented in my writing, and I think about how I am deploying this story. I’m not just publishing it; I am deploying it. I’m sending it out to accomplish something specific. And when I keep that sense of mission, that sense of intention and purpose, it doesn’t matter that there’s this huge drama going on, or even that sometimes I am at the center of a drama that I don’t even know about. I’m like, “I am not going to investigate, and I am not going to care.” Because these are the things that matter, and all of this distracts from that. But I think it’s a hard lesson to learn. And I always say, “Okay, that’s a checkers’ problem. I’m playing chess.”

How I define “success”

I think it’s disingenuous to pretend that how well a book sells, or whether or not it hits a list, is not a part of how people calculate success. Of course I’m cognizant of it, especially at this stage of my career, because there are pressures that come with it. But [sales] is not my first metric of success. My first metric of success is impact. When I’m building a story, I don’t start with character; I start with discourse. What is the conversation we want to have, and who do I want to feel seen?

That’s where I start. Using Score as a case study, I want to have discourse about mental illness and, even more specifically, I want to talk about Black women and mental illness in this country. I want to talk about delayed diagnosis, misdiagnosis, compromised outcomes, criminalization of mental illness—that is the conversation I want to have.

This story is incredibly intersectional. The protagonist is a woman, she’s Black, she’s bisexual, and she has bipolar disorder. All of those intersections are on the page. I want people who are bisexual, who are Black women, who are navigating mental illness, I want them to feel seen. So when I am getting messages from people who are like, “I’ve never seen my thing on the page in fiction this way,” or, “I knew there was something wrong, but now after reading Score, I am going to get a diagnosis,” or, “I haven’t spoken to my mom in five years, I never understood what she was going through, but after reading Score, I’ve gone back to my mom who has this diagnosis…” That is the impact that I’m looking for. That is the first metric of success for me.

When I see the story accomplishing what I sent it out to do, that is success.