Haley Jakobson: On Writing a Book for Her Teenage Self to Read

Haley Jakobson (she/her) is a bisexual writer living in Brooklyn, New York. In her work she explores queerness, mental health, and trauma. Haley loves bodega sandwiches (no cheese), writing on the subway, and will change your mind about Geminis. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In this post, Haley discusses how her debut novel was inspired by what she wishes she could’ve read as a teenager and giving yourself time as a writer to create.

Name: Haley Jakobson
Literary agent: Ayla Zuraw-Friedland
Book title: Old Enough
Publisher: Dutton
Release date: June 20th, 2023
Genre/category: Coming-of-Age fiction
Elevator pitch for the book: Savannah Henry is hurtling toward the person she is becoming, while contending with the person she thought she had to be. Old Enough is a love letter to queer community and what it means to integrate a painful past with a joyful future.

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I set out to write a book I wish my 16-year-old self could have read. A book about a young woman flailing her way into her identity.

Savannah is so many things all at once—she’s coming into her bisexuality, unpacking past trauma, building queer community, learning how to let go of a friendship she thought she’d have forever, sweaty-palmed in the presence of her big gay crush, and healing as a sexual assault survivor in a post #MeToo world. I wrote a too-much book for all the too-much women.

I wrote most of the chapters where Savannah is a teenager in 2017 and let them sit for a long time. I always knew that my first novel would be, in part, about sexual violence. But I knew I needed to wait until the massive learning curve of #MeToo seeped into the zeitgeist, until there was enough language around the nuances of consent to write the book I wanted to. As I let those early chapters sit, I tried to figure out the connective tissue around it—what the bulk of the story would center around.

I took a class from A.E. Osworth called Joy First Writing, and that’s where everything opened up for me. I realized I wanted to write a book about queer joy and weave in the story of healing from assault through community. It was the only way I could write a book that dealt with such heavy topics, I needed to have a joyous experience writing as much as I wanted to infuse the book with joy.

Picking out a cover was really hard! I thought it would be a breeze, but it was a big learning curve to learn how to communicate with my team about visuals. I’m such a words person, it was difficult to express what I envisioned—but we got there and I’m so happy with where we landed.

I learned halfway through that I actually was an outline girlie! I outlined the second half of my novel using the Save The Cat! story structure and it was so helpful. Creativity can really benefit from a container.

I hope they’ll find healing, tenderness, joy, laughter, and warmth. I hope that survivors will feel seen and validated and feel held by a story that centers survivors and not abusers. I hope queer folks feel celebrated and championed.

I hope people find solace in knowing they are not alone in the grief and complexity of friendship breakups. I hope that it does justice to the messiness and nostalgia of girlhood. And I hope they take away the message that they are never beholden to the person they were yesterday.

Creativity has its seasons. Let your writing bake, marinate, hibernate. You’re writing stories all the time, even if they’re not on paper. Life is long and art is never linear—give yourself time.

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