'Divergent' author visits Naperville before 'Allegiant' movie release

The day before the movie version of Veronica Roth's "Allegiant" hits theaters, hundreds of Naperville middle schoolers got to hear from the author herself.

Roth spoke Thursday morning at Gregory Middle School in Indian Prairie Unit District 204 with a message promoting creativity, curiosity and perseverance.

Before finding a publisher for her first novel, "Divergent," Roth said she got 35 rejections for a previous manuscript. Yet she kept writing.

"It's just something that I like so much that I don't mind failing at it," said Roth, a 27-year-old Barrington native. "I just love writing more than I hate failure."

Students dressed in gear representing the five "factions" to which characters in the "Divergent" series belong; a yellow Hawaiian lei represented the peaceful Amity faction, while fake glasses with white, paper rims meant the intelligent Erudite faction.

Several students said they're eager to see "Allegiant" on the big screen, especially after getting a visit from its author.

"I literally choked on my food I was so excited," sixth-grader Rishita Boddu said.

Students also were relieved one of their favorite authors has experienced her share of letdowns, and they took inspiration from her advice to be "the dummy who keeps getting up."

"Failure shouldn't push you down; you should always keep trying," said Yash Roy, a Gregory seventh-grader.

Finding success after failure comes down to editing, Roth said. Editing can be a humbling process of self-improvement applicable to all pursuits, not just writing.

"What you can do when you figure out you didn't do it right the first time is pretty amazing," she said.

Each of Roth's books goes through five rounds of self-editing, not to mention revisions from her editors and publisher. It's a scary process, and she told students her first book, "Divergent," was "basically inspired by fear."

As an anxious person who always has enjoyed being on her own, Roth took a psychology class at Northwestern University in Evanston and learned about exposure therapy. She found it fascinating that fear itself could be used as a weapon to overcome the deepest insecurities. So she created a world in which the main characters would undergo their own version of fear-exposure training to become as brave as their Dauntless faction implies.

"You can overcome fear by encountering fear over and over again," Roth told her audience.

The world she created became the "Divergent" universe, which has brought Roth plenty of book sales, movie deals and adoring fans - along with her share of bad Amazon reviews that still feel like failures.

"Even if you fail," she told the crowd of Gregory students, "you are not a failure."