Interview with an Author: Jan Eliasberg

Our January guest is Jan Eliasberg.

Jan Eliasberg is an award-winning writer-director devoted to telling the stories of exceptional women robbed of their rightful place in history. Eliasberg is a graduate of Wesleyan University, the Yale School of Drama, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program. Hannah’s War is her first novel. She lives in New York City.

If you would like to purchase Jan’s book, Hannah’s War, you can find a copy here.

Tell us a little about your writing journey. Have you always wanted to be a writer? 

I grew up in Manhattan, in a family that valued culture, education, and literacy. I read the doorstop-heavy edition of the New York Times every Sunday morning. I believed that the greatest thing in the world would be to have a novel in the Book Review section. I knew I was a storyteller from a very early age, but it took me a number of years to consider myself a “real” writer.

Was there a certain point you remember where you felt empowered to call yourself a writer? Or have you always felt like you were a writer?

I was the obnoxious older sister who arranged musicals, and made-up plays casting my brother and sister and neighborhood friends. I told my siblings made-up stories to make them feel safe. So, I knew I was a storyteller. I knew I was a director. I knew I was a screenwriter. But it wasn’t until I wrote Hannah’s War that I was able to call myself a writer.

Your book, Hannah’s War, was inspired by the true story of Dr. Lise Meitner, the real physicist who was the inspiration for the character of Dr. Hannah Weiss. How did you first learn about her and ultimately make the decision to write about her story?

I was in the New York Public Library doing research for a screenplay I was writing for Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz about the W.A.S.P. (Women Air Service Pilots) in WWII. I was thinking of ending the screenplay on the day the war ended so I looked up the August 7, 1945 issue of the New York Times. There was a massive, bold headline: FIRST ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN; TRUMAN WARNS FOE OF A ‘RAIN OF RUIN.’ 

Below that, I found an article that traced the simultaneously terrifying and wondrous development of the atomic bomb, its scientific history, and the race between the Allies and the Germans to attain the ultimate weapon. Somewhere under the fold, buried in a dense paragraph, this sentence appeared: “The key component that allowed the Allies to develop the bomb was brought to the Allies by a female, ‘non-Aryan’ physicist.” Who was this woman? I wondered. 

Who was the female Jewish physicist responsible for the single most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century whose work had, literally, changed the world? And why isn’t her face staring out of every science textbook? I felt as if the mysterious, unnamed “non-Aryan” physicist reached out of history, grabbed me by the lapels, to insist that I needed to tell her story.

The character Jack Delaney also plays a major role in the story. How did you research both Jack & Hannah’s characters and weave them together so intricately?

Jack’s character is entirely fictional, although there were certainly Military Investigators and William “Wild Bill” Donovan was hand-picking an elite and slightly bizarre team of spies who would become the O.S.S. and, later, the CIA. 

In the original outlines, Jack was more of a literary device – someone questioning Hannah so that her story in Germany could reveal itself. But I quickly realized that I needed the investigator to become a major character. 

Since so much of the book is about keeping secrets, and whether to hide or remain true to oneself, the idea that Jack would be “passing” was irresistible. My father, who is Jewish, had told me how difficult it was for him to get a job, and how entire swathes of the business world were closed to him as a Jew. In fact, he had even considered changing his name. Once I put those pieces together, I was off to the races.

I’m intrigued by the field note confidential sections – I love details like this that break up a lengthy text. Why did you decide to use them, and how did you determine where to place them throughout the book?

There actually were Field Notes (almost like telegrams) and a lot of them were very frank and funny, and filled with pungent language and expressions. So, I loved adding that slightly comic, cynical, and very testosterone driven POV to the book. 

Also, I hate writing bald exposition and I wanted Jack to be cunning and clever in how he went about his business of finding the spy. I realized that the Field Notes could give the reader the exposition they needed and keep them from getting too confused about what Jack was up to. So, they served many purposes. I was originally going to have many more of them but, in the end, I put them where I felt they were necessary to serve the story.

Describe your writing and/or creative process.

I spend a long time doing what we call in film and television “breaking story.” I have a structural template that I use, and I write scenes out on index cards, tracing character arcs, plot points, act breaks, and plot twists. I end up with a massive collection of index cards, which I move around on my wall; they look like the ravings of a crazy person but they’re incredibly clear and cogent to me. 

Many of the cards are filled with research, descriptions, and even lines of dialogue. While I’m creating that outline – the structure of the story – I’m also researching more deeply and incorporating details of that research into the outline. Then I will do a written outline (which is almost like a screenplay version of the story). That’s my way of testing the structure to see if it works, to find the plot holes, the weaknesses, and the missing beats for each character. 

DON’T GET IT RIGHT, GET IT WRITTEN.

By the time I’ve finished that, I’m ready to actually sit down and write a first draft. I cancel all my plans, alert my friends and let them know that I might well cancel plans at the last minute. I put myself in a little greenhouse with very few distractions and write. I have an actual cardboard sign that I tape up on the wall of my office – above all the index cards – that says: DON’T GET IT RIGHT, GET IT WRITTEN. That’s the way I give myself permission to write badly because I know that first draft isn’t going to (and doesn’t have to) be great. 

But, you can’t start to revise unless you have that first draft written. Because I’ve done so much work on the structure and the outline, the draft will often come quite quickly.

I’m a sucker for a good ending, and the novel kept me wondering what would happen throughout. Did Hannah’s story actually turn out like that? Or did you take some creative liberties?

 Hannah and Dr. Lise Meitner’s stories deviate long before the ending. Meitner never went to Los Alamos, so that entire part of the story was a product of my imagination. Although I suspect that Lise Meitner had a creative crush on her lab partner – that kind of collaborative work is extremely intimate, almost like a love affair or a marriage – she was never in love with him, nor he with her. So, the love story, too, deviates completely from Meitner’s life. 

I did always know that I wanted Hannah to have faith in Stefan and for him to validate her faith. I was very much intrigued by the puzzling fact that the Germans never did get the atomic bomb, never even came close. No one has ever been able to give a satisfying explanation as to why they were so far behind when the initial discoveries of atomic fission were made in Berlin at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

I wanted to put all the characters (and the reader) through the wringer on the journey. I wanted the “happy” ending to be earned and to come at some real cost

I knew I wanted Jack to realize at the very last second that Stefan was a better, more courageous man than he himself had been – that was very much part of Jack’s journey. So, I wanted that “Casablanca” ending, and I always hoped that the reader would want Jack and Hannah to end up together until they, too, understood who Stefan really was, and what a risk he and Hannah had taken out of their love for each other and their shared desire to heal the world. 

But I wanted to put all the characters (and the reader) through the wringer on the journey. I wanted the “happy” ending to be earned and to come at some real cost (in this case, to Jack). One thing I hear consistently from readers is that the ending comes as a complete surprise, so I’m delighted that I succeeded in that regard.

What was your biggest writing obstacle and how did you overcome it?

The biggest obstacle was finding the faith and courage within myself – which means finding a story I cared about so deeply that I simply HAD TO write it. I had to divorce myself from other people’s opinions and from the validation of the outside world. 

In the case of Hannah’s War, I had to get to the point where I felt that, if I didn’t write the book, I would regret it for the rest of my life. Obviously, I hoped someone would publish it, but I felt that I needed to write it whether or not it ever saw the light of day.

What is the part of your published work or writing process you are most proud of?

I’m proud of the complexities, depth, and layers in Hannah’s War; there are stories within stories; and I had to master the basics of nuclear physics as well as the intricate details of that period in history in order to create it. People read it very quickly because of the espionage thriller aspect; it’s a page turner. But it’s also a delicate and highly complex piece of literary architecture which one appreciates more upon reading a second or third time.

I’m also proud of the writing itself on the level of the sentence. I think the language is evocative and vibrant; the language allows readers to be immersed in the worlds I’m creating.

Finally, a little thing that meant a great deal to me: after I’d done my revisions for my editor at Little Brown, the book went through two separate copy edits. Both of the copy editors were extraordinary, catching tiny little details that I wouldn’t have caught in a million years. And both copy editors wrote me personal notes after they’d finished working on the book; they were quite effusive about how beautifully it was written, how proud they were to have worked on the manuscript, how much they had come to care about the characters. That meant so much to me because copy editors read everything – good, bad, and indifferent. I was told by my editor that copy editors rarely want to engage with novelists because they are usually intensely critical of the way a book’s been written. And they should know…so I treasure those responses more than any reviews I’ve gotten.

Do you have any plans for another book or writing project? If so, could you tell us about them?  

I’m currently writing the screenplay for Hannah’s War – adapting my own book for film. And I have a strong outline for my next book as well, which is a companion piece to Hannah’s War; it grew very organically out of the work I did writing Hannah’s War, as well as out of reader’s responses to the book.

What motivates you to keep writing?

I love the process, plain and simple. And there are a lot of stories I want to tell – they’re lined up like airplanes in a holding pattern, circling the airport waiting for the signal to land.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to aspiring writers?

“Don’t listen to advice; listen to your own intuition.” Advice is about how other people did something; you need to discover what works for you. Get very quiet so you can hear those internal whispers; those whispers are going to take you where you need to go. But they are very easily drowned out by the ruckus of the outside world and the concern about what other people will think. Taking a risk is always scary – and that’s exactly when magical things happen.

Taking a risk is always scary – and that’s exactly when magical things happen.

If you would like to purchase Jan Eliasberg’s book, Hannah’s War, you can find a copy here.

If you know an author (or of an author) you would love to read an interview with, email me at rachel@capturingyourconfidence.com or submit a suggestion through the contact page!