Do I Like It? Reflecting on Divergent After 15 Years

Or: rebuilding trust in yourself as a writer

Hello, and welcome to 2026. Divergent turns fifteen years old this year (!) and I have been thinking a lot about it— what it was like back then, what it’s like now, and what I’ve learned from all of it. So let’s dive in.

Everyone Else Must Be Right

There are reasons that the brain stores negative feedback better than positive feedback. Mostly: survival. Don’t eat the berry that made you sick, don’t touch the hot stove that burned you, don’t grab a knife by the blade—your brain is good at keeping you safe by storing negative experiences.

Relatedly, negative reviews often have a bigger impact on writers than positive ones, I think that’s typical. And I have been absorbing negative reactions to the Divergent series for fifteen years. The books were far-reaching and they continue to be widely read, which means not only do a lot of people have memories of them, but a lot of people are reacting to them right now, for the first time. This is a good thing— it is a very special, rare thing for books to have that kind of place in culture. This is probably a good opportunity to acknowledge that I am extremely grateful for Divergent and the success that changed my life and established my career. I’m going to acknowledge some of the hard parts in this newsletter, but that doesn’t negate the wonderful, transformative, amazing parts.

My badge for my first event after the book sold (BEA)

The side effect of a series being far-reaching like Divergent was is that the people who don’t like your work will keep saying so. And the people who hated Divergent? They really hated it, and often go out of their way to tell me why…whenever I try to talk about any new work. Or old work. Or any work.

This is a fact of my life and I thought I was receiving all of it maturely and with equanimity. But what I have actually been doing is storing all of that negativity inside me as truth. As fact. Because at a certain point, the easiest way to survive this negativity was to start agreeing with it. If I agree with it, it can’t hurt me, right? So imagine me at a dinner party with people I don’t know well, talking about my work, and when someone asks if Divergent is the book of mine they should start with, I make a face and say, Oh, no. Read one of the later ones. That’s me, protecting myself in advance.

Because really, think of the alternative. Imagine your books being so widely read that 40 million+ people have opinions about them, and then imagine storing the negative opinions better than you store the positive ones, and then imagine trying to insist to even a fraction of all those people that they’re wrong, your books aren’t bad, they’re not giving you credit for what you did well, that you were young and did your best and the books were for teen readers who had maybe never encountered science fiction before and The Hunger Games comparisons weren’t something you wanted or invited and and and—

Imagine insisting on all of that for fifteen years.

From The Hollywood Reporter, with Shailene Woodley

And then imagine you just can’t do it anymore, so you give up.

Everyone Else Must Be Right became my official strategy. People who think I suck? You can’t hurt me, because I’m one of you. Let’s point and laugh at my early work together, so you’re not pointing at me. Anything to stop you from pointing at me.

But What If…

A couple years ago I went to the Eras Tour and it was a blast. I put on black sequin shorts and sang along with the songs I knew at the top of my lungs with a bunch of my friends. And in the days that followed, I thought about those early hits she played and I ached a little, thinking of how nice it would be to embrace the creative work that made you famous instead of feeling like you had to be so dismissive of it.

I dressed as “reputation,” naturally

So on a long drive from Albany to Manchester, Vermont, for a family vacation, I put on the Four audiobook. It’s really weird to think about it now, how my heart was racing right before the story started because I was so convinced this experience was going to make me feel shame.

What I discovered was this: yes, there are things in that book that make me cringe. Of course there are. It’s been over a decade since I wrote it and I’ve grown a lot since then. But there were other things, so many other things, that made me feel pleased. Little descriptions and moments of character development. Emotional resonance and amusing jokes. And even the cheesy parts contributed to this easy, fun reading experience that I wasn’t expecting. And “ease” is not a quality that all books have; it requires skill from the writer, no matter what people say.

Me and my mom in Vermont

I reread the rest of the series after that, and while I saw very clearly the flaws in each work, I also realized what I had done well. Even in Allegiant, which is the messiest of the three books even if you do like the ending, I thought Tobias and Evelyn’s relationship was really wonderful and interesting. I didn’t cry over Tris’s death, I cried over Tobias’s mother finally choosing him instead of revenge. There was something really good there.

In a way, it was devastating to have this experience—to realize that I had spent over a decade being so hard on myself and actually, I should have stood up for myself instead. Not in public, necessarily, because I’m not a masochist, but in the safety of my own mind, I should have told myself, you did your best. And if it didn’t work for some people, you don’t have to agree with them.

Do I Like It?

What I’m working on now, in the aftermath of this revelation, is rebuilding trust. Trust in myself. I realize that for the books that followed Divergent, I was working really hard to make them better, stronger, more respectable—and that’s not a bad thing. I’ve become a much better writer because of that drive to prove myself. But you know, it has its limits. Because when you judge your work by other people’s standards instead of your own, you’ll always fall short. You’ll never allow yourself to feel proud.

And not trusting yourself? It’s not good for your mental health. It’s not good for your well being. And what I want, far more than any external markers of success, is to live a good life. Trusting myself is an important part of that.

I used to know who I was when it came to books and writing. I knew I had good reading comprehension. That I had thoughtful observations about my reading. I knew I was capable of approaching even the most challenging works with confidence, that I could trust my brain to make sense of them. Somehow I lost touch with all of that—a lot of people told me my books were bad and I started to believe them. But actually, I am still the person I was before Divergent came out, capable and thoughtful and observant. My books are that way, too, if you care to look.

Photo by my husband

I am discovering that one way to rebuild trust in yourself is to stop looking at your work and asking “is this good?” Because “good” invites all kinds of other people’s opinions into the space of your writing, as well as your own.

Instead, what if you ask yourself, “Do I like it?”

It’s really hard to let that question be important. If you’re reading this, maybe you’re a writer trying to get published, and you’re getting rejected left, right, and center, and “Do I like it?” feels like a completely irrelevant and useless question. Or maybe you’re an author who, like me, has swallowed too much negativity and you no longer trust what you like. Or maybe you’re just a reader who feels a little bit lonely in your preferences.

But I encourage you— I encourage us— to try to let this question matter. As someone who’s lived a very unique publishing journey, I sometimes don’t feel like my experiences can be relevant. But here’s one:

Poster Girl came out in 2022, and it didn’t do well. I’m not going to get specific about it, but like, when you say a book didn’t do well and no one who has seen the numbers argues with you? It didn’t do well.

This smile is hiding the fact that I know this book isn’t doing well

But I love Poster Girl. I worked very hard on it, and when I reread bits of it, I think it’s excellent. That book makes me happy even though I know it wasn’t a career high point in the traditional sense. Its release bummed me out, but…not as much as you’d think.

Because there’s a little fire in my chest when I think about that book, a little fire that won’t go out, and that fire is liking it.

Liking your book doesn’t mean being delusional about its perfection. You can still like something and acknowledge its missteps. But liking it means acknowledging its successes, too. What do you like about this thing you made? What are the moments, big and small, that make you happy when you reread it? Think about it.

And let it be important. Because it is.

Liking it is about trusting your own perceptions of what’s good, entertaining, compelling, and interesting, and allowing them to guide you through your work. Yes, sometimes what you like will be out of step with what other people like, and that may result in setbacks. And you certainly need to evolve—to read widely and thoughtfully, to develop as a person and a writer—which will inevitably change what you like.

Liking it is not about shutting down, digging in your heels, and becoming closed off to growth.

It’s about opening up, letting yourself take up space, trusting yourself, and kindling a little fire that won’t go out.

Let it burn, baby.

V