'Divergent' Author Gives Advice to Romeoville Students

Submitted by Valley View School District 365U

Photo: Author Veronica Roth autographs a book for 8th grader Faith Miller during a visit to Martinez Middle School Thursday.

Don’t give up.

That’s the message New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth brought to A. Vito Martinez Middle School eighth-graders Thursday.

“A lot of times you will fail,” said Roth. “What’s important is to remember your worth isn’t damaged just because you try something and fail.”

The author best known for her Divergent trilogy of science fiction novels, consisting of "Divergent," "Insurgent," and "Allegiant;" and "Four: A Divergent Collection," told of how she tried many things during her youth including ballet, gymnastics, violin, flute, cross country, track, volleyball, and debate, all of which she failed at.

“I was pretty good at writing from an early age. But I wasn’t always good at it,” Roth said. “But I didn’t give up on writing.”

While she was attending Northwestern University studying creative writing, she wrote Divergent over winter break and took her manuscript to a writers conference.

The book was sold the following month to HarperCollins and it debuted at number six on the New York Times best-seller list. Her next book, Insurgent, was number one on that list. And when "Allegiant" came out a year later, it became the most-preordered book ever issued by HarperCollins.

The trilogy was a huge commercial success, with more than 30 million copies sold by 2015.

A film adaptation of her first book, also titled "Divergent," was released in 2014. A box-office success, it led to the sequels "Insurgent" (2015) and "The Divergent Series: Allegiant" (2016).

“Writing is an act of humility,” she told students. “You have to see what you did wrong and you have to come up with a plan to do it right. That’s a life skill.”

Roth’s visit was courtesy of Anderson’s Book Shops.