Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Todd.
Hi Anna, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Ahhh, how to make this short haha. Okay, so over a decade ago, I decided on a random Sunday to take my love of reading and romance and channel it into a “secret” writing hobby on the platform Wattpad. I wrote chapter after chapter on my cell phone while raising my special needs son. I couldn’t afford to work because the cost of care for him would have been higher than any job I was qualified for. So, as he slept, I wrote chapter after chapter and the story began to explode on the platform. Word of mouth ended up making it the highest read story on the site by a big margin, and the company approached me to see what my plans to publish the story were.
I was beyond confused by this and had never considered my (what ended up being a million words long) story something that could be published and put into stores, made into films, etc. So after much conversation and years of imposter syndrome, I began to travel the world and become a best selling author across the globe.
My dream was to have my own imprint where I could publish the “under dogs” the writers and stories that mainstream publishing often ignores unless they go viral. My plan was to do this by forty, but I’m fortunate enough to be into my fourth year and we have three novels releasing just this year and they’re written by incredible women who have something important to say.
I also began producing films, but I can’t say much about that yet 😛 Only that I’m a Producer on the film Regretting You and was the original right’s holder before partnering with Constantin Film and selling the property to Paramount for distribution. I’ll be on set next week for it and I couldn’t be more proud! I’m also an Executive Producer on the film, Shiver, which is adapted from one of my favorite novels as a teen.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Absolutely not haha. I feel like someone threw me out of the back of a moving semi onto a gravel road since day one. I learned everything as I went and that was beyond challenging. But, I would never change the way my unintentional success happened and I know that becoming a writer, “successful” by society’s standards-or not- is really freaking hard and takes a lot of courage, so in some ways I got lucky that I just stumbled into it. The constant internet bullying (it was really really bad in the earlier days) was the hardest to deal with mentally, but I’ve grown up so much since then, and there’s virtually nothing anyone can say to me that a girl on twitter hasn’t said a decade ago.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I write romance books that are grounded, realistic, and full of struggles. Whether those struggles are internal or external, my stories are never the happy cute rom-coms (that I adore and read all the time :P) I specialize in emotion and writing without barriers. I couldn’t tell you how to format a paragraph, but I can tell you that Chapter 19 of Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare made me cry so hard that my eyes were swollen shut the next morning, and that I’ve read it at least ten times since. As for what sets me apart from others, I’m not really sure how to answer this because every person I know, in my field and not have their own traits and hold so much value in different ways, and I love that.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Being able to break generational trauma and habits and give my son a safe, warm, welcoming, quiet home.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://annatodd.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annatodd/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorannatodd/
Image Credits
Hong Jinwook
