Katie Neipris said Saturday evening was dreamlike.
It was the night of the UCLA alumna’s book launch party, marking the release of her new novel, “The Inconvenient Process of Falling.” Kerckhoff Grand Salon was filled with balloons as Neipris’ family and friends celebrated her first book with a photo booth, food and book signing with Neipris.
Neipris said she loved reading growing up, especially “Harry Potter,” and she admittedly found her Hogwarts at UCLA in 2010. She became serious about writing a novel after her grandfather died, inspiring her to study abroad at Oxford the following summer. In Europe, Neipris sat where famous writers had once been and returned to the United States truly motivated to write.
Neipris said she began crafting a story about her own age group, 19-year-olds fresh out of their first year of college, suspended in the world in between childhood and adulthood. She participated in the Night of Writing Dangerously and National Novel Writing Month, during which she reached 50,000 words.
“Everyone I meet and interact with influences me in some way, and I really wanted to write about people that felt real,” Neipris said. “I wanted to write something that felt like a universal 19-year-old experience because it’s a really weird age.”
This novel, a work in progress throughout her college years, became “The Inconvenient Process of Falling,” which Neipris describes as “The Breakfast Club” meets camping. The novel is about a group of seven childhood friends’ summer reunion after their freshman year of college.
During the launch, Neipris spoke on the history of her novel, published less than a year after her college graduation. She said her goal was to write a story that accurately reflected the UCLA first-year experience. If just one person can relate to her story, Neipris said, then she will feel content with her work.
Neipris held a book signing and then a Q&A. The audience asked questions about Neipris’ creative process, to which she said she thrives under pressure by giving herself deadlines. She said her current projects include a “Parks and Recreation” spec – an uncommissioned speculative script – and a pilot because she wants to be a showrunner. Neipris hopes to finish her next novel, a period drama about a woman with an abusive mother on a road trip, by next December.
During the Q&A, Neipris said she encourages hesitant young writers at UCLA to take advantage of the campus and start their own novel.
“Once you graduate, the real world is cruel, so appreciate the now,” Neipris said. “You get to go to (the library) where Ray Bradbury wrote ‘Fahrenheit 451’ and you can stay there all night.”
Neipris also discussed her own writing experience while at UCLA, such as the revelation of rereading the work of her younger self and seeing the improvement as she edited her finished manuscript.
“Every day I wake up like, ‘Oh I should’ve changed that one word in that one paragraph,’” Neipris said. “But I feel like any time you write anything you get better, so I hope that by the time I’m 90 I’ll be really good.”