Emmy Award-Winning, Anjanette Delgado

Anjanette Delgado is an Emmy award-winning writer and producer. Her first sitcom, “Como ser maravillosa en la cama” was bought by HBO Latin America and her first novel, “The Heartbreak Pill” is just out from Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. She lives in Miami, Florida.

The Heartbreak Pill’s concept is intriguing. Tell us how you built the story around the idea.

At the time I began writing “The Heartbreak Pill,” I was the 6PM General Producer of a local newscast in Miami, so I was exposed to a lot of information about things normal people do in extreme situations… seemingly-normal fathers killing their own kids, suicides, murder, crimes of passion, but also relatively-benign things that seemed bizarre to me, like a former Miss Universe so heartbroken she could barely speak, proceeding to cry disconsolately on live television, in front of her mother and small children, because her husband had left her for Jennifer Lopez… and it was just… heartbreaking… to see this woman who had always been private, elegant, together, admired… looking like a rag someone had uses to scoop poop… she was bewildered. No filter to how what she was exposing was affecting her career or those listening. That’s the kind of heartbreak Erika goes through.

So, when I began to write the novel, it was important to me that my protagonist be a competent, practical, modern, intelligent woman with no dependency issues. I wanted to see how crazy heartbreak could make her, and whether she’d be able to turn herself around, if her survival spirit would kick in and how. Also, I wanted to know how far she’d go to “heal” herself, to be “normal” again.

To me, extreme heartbreak that makes people stop eating or want to die is an illness. And illness is an imbalance somewhere in your body. So I made her a chemist and gave her the job of proving my belief that the body is perfect and if it can heal itself of so many things, why not heartbreak?

You’re an author as well as a television producer. How does writing differ from producing?

Producing involves many people. So the most perfect vision of what you want to create is the one you have previous to actually producing whatever it is you’re producing. In the end, the show will be a bit of you and a lot of bits of everyone else on the team, although, I also write the scripts for most of what I produce, so I have more control than most producers over the final outcome. With writing, it’s all on you. You either said it well or not, connected or not, failed to tell the truth or told it and looked like a complete moron, etc.

What prompted you to write a book?

I wanted to write a book since I was 7 years old. I wrote stories and “hand-printed” them on regular paper, attaching my own original crayon-colored cover illustrations. And even back then --my first story was called “California Girl” about a girl whose parents were divorcing-- I knew that telling stories about people and the things they did in different situations was the way to save ourselves and others. It was always about who would read it and feel, as I have so many times, “my God… this is me. This book is talking to me. I am so not alone here.”

Outline your day as a producer and writer.

Well. I’m really lucky now. Sometimes I forget to give thanks for how my life has shaped up. These days my production work is mostly done in the development stage… as Director of Strategic Content Development for a small creative workshop of a television production company, my work is to create or find the right concept, and develop it to the pilot stage, before turning it over to a team.

So I get into work around ten, read the NY Times online while drinking a Tall Soy Chai Tea Latte, read trade headlines and answer any urgent emails. My usual goal is to work in blocks of two hours… so I might read a script, critiquing on the margins for 2 hours, rest my brain, then write out the first draft of a concept sheet for an idea a client has requested, such as a cooking show with reality/contest/standup comedy elements, appropriate for family viewing and high-concept enough for national cable primetime.

If there’s a meeting, I try to schedule it in the afternoon, and I always finish off by thinking. Just thinking about tomorrow… what I want or need to do… even tidying the office because I’m terrible and can’t leave if everything isn’t in its place. It sounds like common logic and yet I can’t believe how cranky and depressed I get when I don’t give myself time to think. My boss understands that and it is such a luxury to have someone give you permission to protect your creativity.

Of course, when it’s a filming day, it’s great. Because we all wear jeans and tees to work and we’re excited that today we’re actually going to “do” it. And I get to be one of the kids again and feel the adrenaline of the control room or of a street shoot. I also love working with talent, shaping their projection, making them look and feel stronger as they communicate what we’ve prepared for them.

After work, I commute about a half hour and since my boyfriend works late, I have the evening to write until he gets home… although, to be honest, I don’t write, write every night. Sometimes I just think about the writing… it helps when you finally sit down to put words on, well, your laptop.

It wasn’t always this easy… my children are in college now, but that meant having them so young I should have been jailed for it. They’re 20 and 18 and I just turned 40. It’s also meant being more organized and finding ways to connect with friends that don’t necessarily mean going out to dinner or having 3-hour phone conversations every week. I also watch a lot less TV than I used to, but have substituted it for audio books, obscene amounts of NPR and, of course, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I love that man!!

What type of research did you do in bio-chemistry to prepare yourself for writing The Heartbreak Pill?

So much that I put myself in danger of never finishing it. I had always been a big fan of Helen Fisher, so I reread all her books and articles. I also read Dianne Ackerman and Olivia Judson and a book called “A General Theory of Love.” When I began to see that a pill was actually possible, I pitched the story of a love switch to the producers of Univision’s “Aqui y Ahora,” a news magazine in the style of “Dateline.” That allowed me to get paid for my research. I talked to love consultants and psychologists, to sex therapists and to criminologists. I read every related Internet article I could find and interviewed several chemists. I even read transcripts of science Nobel Prize winners… they talked about magic and intuition being a big part of their discoveries and it sort of gave me permission to take on the topic. I also happened to meet someone who works for a company that makes blood-testing equipment. He told me how the founders of the company had tested the equipment on themselves for years… constantly drawing blood from each other until they felt like vampires. It inspired me. Is that as weird as it sounds when I read it back to myself?

What was it like to hold the completed book in your hands?

Strange. It was something like, “I finished. It’s done. I’ve “raised” this story now. It’s off to college. Not at all what I expected to feel. But days later, I got an email from someone who tracked me down after reading the novel, and went into detail telling me how much, and in exactly what ways the novel had touched her, and that’s when I felt it: the feeling I had thought I would have when I held the book in my hands. I realized I didn’t want to “have” a book published. I wanted to be read and make people feel things. I will confess that, on the other hand, it depresses me to no end when I go to a bookstore, look for my book, and don’t find it.

What is The Heartbreak’s Pill’s theme and how do you hope it impacts readers?

We all have our own way of healing from heartbreak. You don’t have to lie down and die, or, worse, hide how badly you’re feeling. Just feel it and, when you’re ready, search inside yourself for the antidote. It’s inside you. We all have our own little heartbreak pill.

How much of yourself is there in Erika Luna?

In the 1st drafts, there was a whole lot. I was angry and she was angry. But by the time the last revision was done, all that was left was that she was still Puerto Rican like myself, and she was going through a divorce, like I had. Also, my friends say we have the same weird sense of humor. But I think she’s more real than I know how to be. She tells the truth more. And she came from a family that cherished her, and she’s more trusting throughout the novel than I am. She’s younger and pragmatic in many ways… oh, and she’s much more of a prude than I ever want to be.
I think she’s less Americanized than I am. More of a Puerto Rican, if that’s possible to measure.

Based on the concept of The Heartbreak Pill, do you think emotions can hinder us from embracing a happy life?

I really do. I think we can neglect all the good we have because heartbreak makes us feel like nothing else matters… it’s like an exclusion disease: nobody will make me feel like this, I’ll never find anyone again, this means I’m worthless, life is over, I’m too old for anyone to want me… it’s like blindness, and I believe this blindness is what makes us do desperate things… from calling and hanging up; to having him followed, to neglecting to bathe for days and, who knows, how many other destructive behaviors, such as running him over again and again or cutting off his penis.

What are the passions of your life?

Popular art… I believe art saves us by transforming us. In all its forms… when you create something to give someone else, to share yourself… there’s so much love in that. And so I love antique markets, and museums, and traveling, and, of course, reading and writing… especially journals I fill with all kinds of crazy magazine-like collages of where I am now and where I’d like to go next. Anything that’s just created without much formality… scattered signs of life… graphic design… graffiti… anything that takes my breath away and makes me feel alive, even if for a second.

Share with us your greatest achievement.

I’d love to say my children. And they’re wonderful. But I think they’re their own greatest achievement. My own was overcoming the 1st 25 years of my life and learning that I could be happy. That I was always in charge of me and my own happiness. Books played a huge part in that. If we just taught kids to loooove reading at an early age, so many other things would become easier in education. Now, we push, push, push them… if we taught them to love to read, a part of them would search and find the little motor allowing them to push and save themselves.

Do you have any future writing projects in mind that you’d like to share with us?

Sure. I have a book of poems coming out. It’s called “Heartbreak Nation and Other Poems.” It’s a little grassroots project done in conjunction with some local artists. We’re actually going to self-publish a limited edition and produce it in conjunction with a few “heartbreak events” that will include art, short films, music and of course readings of poetry and prose.

I’m also working on my second novel, tentatively titled “The Eighth Street Clairvoyant,” about a woman who becomes clairvoyant on the morning she turns fifty years old. She owns a small apartment building in the heart of Little Havana in Miami… a very Latino, very bohemian, artsy area, and she’d celebrated the beginning of the “second-half” of her life by ending an affair with a sexy, intellectual, married tenant the night before. The he turns up dead and the novel begins. And, of course, this had to be the moment she became able to see more than she had ever bargained for. Though the murder is the catalyst, the novel is really about the things people do when heartbroken, the things we can’t see when we don’t know how to look inside and the amazing ways life has to lift us out of just about anything.

Is there a motto or favorite quote that encourages (or energizes you) in attaining your life-goals?

Yes. Winston Churchill’s “When you’re going through hell… keep going.”