Lancali is the author of I Fell in Love with Hope, a novel that “explores the turmoil of grief and illness while revealing the unequivocal power of friendship through an endearing cast of characters.”
Show notes:
- Lancali – Lou-Andrea Callewaert
- I Fell in Love with Hope
- Substack
- Julian Barnes: Departure(s)
- How Books Are Published, from Author to Agent to Publisher to Reader
- Why you shouldn’t judge people by what they read – YouTube
- Does Scrivener use AI?
- How to Manage Your Characters in Scrivener
- Cormac McCarthy: The Road
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Lancali’s real name is Lou-Andrea Callewaert. She was born in France, but moved to Florida when she was young. We discussed the use of her name as the author of her novel. When she was in high school, on an equestrian sports team, no one could pronounce her last name that was on her shirt. So they made up this name, and, she said, “that’s what I chose as my handle on Instagram and TikTok. When I started marketing the book, I was advised to use it as the name. I did not foresee the book deal or this career coming from this; for future books, I’ve spoken to my agent and my publisher about using my real name.”
I Fell in Love with Hope is a novel about how young people deal with chronic illness. Lou-Andrea has an autoimmune disease, and much of the novel is inspired by her experience. But she didn’t want to follow the standard trope for this sort of novel. “What I disliked about terminal illness in popular culture was the center around romance and how romantic love eclipses the suffering of terminal or chronic illness. What I wanted to do was write from the perspective of a child who has gone through this, because most of the writers go for the romance angle, rather than focusing on what it’s like to be sick when you’re an adolescent.”
Instead of writing a story that justifies suffering, she said, “one of the best antidotes to the misery of suffering is finding friends and family, and not necessarily romantic love that we put a huge focus on in that genre.”
She stressed that the book is not about her. “People sometimes read a book and think that it’s a reflection of the author’s life, which is not always the case. One of the characters in my book has a fatal heart disease. I obviously don’t have fatal heart disease. But there are people who perceive it as, ‘she went through all of this,’ and it’s not as dramatic as people want it to be. Yes, it was a very painful experience. But I think part of writing this book was me trying to go through the catharsis of ‘I went through it.’”
Lou-Andrea was a sophomore in college when she got a book deal, and I asked if this was like a lightning strike, getting this sudden success. She had originally planned to self-publish the book, but when she got the contract, “it was a very long process. I didn’t realize how lengthy and exhausting the publishing process can be.” But it was a sort of perfect storm, she said, “because this was post-COVID and there were a lot of people who had gone through grieving or had gone through illnesses. It was a time when people were connecting with the material.”
I asked if she felt a bit of imposter syndrome, which can be common among authors who have early success. She said, “I think I live in a perpetual state of imposter syndrome. It goes back and forth. There are some days when [I think] I’m amazing. I can’t believe I wrote that. And then there’s some days when you feel like a fraud because, there is a part of me [that thinks] I’m just good at marketing. There’s something my editor told me when I voiced this concern, because I was young and didn’t have frontal lobes yet. She said to me, ‘I wouldn’t have bought your book if I didn’t like it.’”
Lou-Andrea started using Scrivener when she was writing I Fell in Love with Hope with Word. One feature that attracted her was the Corkboard. “I’m a storyboarder. I have a bulletin board in my room, and it has a bunch of random sticky notes and everything. I have a notebook with all my notes, and everything is spread out. When I found Scrivener, it became this coalescing force where I could have all of my messiness organized for me on this singular platform.”
I asked about the bulletin board that she said was “atrociously messy,” whether she thought about scanning her notes and adding them to her Scrivener project. I suggested that the bulletin board should reflect all of the ideas bouncing around in your brain before you put them together. “It reflects the chaos,” she said. “What’s great about Scrivener is that even when you don’t scan the notes, if you put them in manually, the act of organizing them organizes the thoughts in my brain.”
One other thing that convinced her to use Scrivener was the Literature & Latte’s stance regarding AI. “My book came out [around the same time as] artificial intelligence chatbots, which I’m not a fan of. When I emailed Scrivener and asked questions about this, they were firm, [saying] we’re not going to use AI because writers don’t want AI in their writing platforms. For me, AI robs us of humanity.”
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener. He also offers one-to-one Scrivener coaching.