Jessica Elefante: Writing About Breaking Free of Influence
Jessica Elefante is a writer who has spent the last few decades examining what it means to be human in our modern world. Her essays have appeared in The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and more. As the founder of acclaimed Folk Rebellion and a critic of today’s culture, Elefante’s award-winning talks, films, and work have been featured by Vogue, the Los Angeles Times, The Observer, Paper magazine, Wired, and elsewhere.
In her previous life as a brand strategist, she was recognized as one of Brand Innovators’ 40 Under 40 and has been a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School and New York University. She’s influenced by the social, cultural, and technological circumstances of her life but mostly by her desire to lead a colorful one.
Raised in Upstate New York, she now lives in Brooklyn with her family. She is no longer bullshitting. Follow her on Instagram.
Jessica Elefante (Photo credit: Rich Wade)
In this post, Jessica shares how her son inspired her book, why she believes people need to wake up to the culture of influence, and more.
Name: Jessica Elefante
Literary agent: Lucinda Halpern
Book title: Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You (including me)
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release date: October 10, 2023
Genre/category: Creative Nonfiction/Social Sciences, Cultural Criticism
Elevator pitch for the book: Part cultural criticism, part rueful confessional, a reformed brand strategist brings to light the impact of influence on us and our society and offers an escape in this ironically persuasive case for not being so easily influenced anymore.
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What prompted you to write this book?
I’ve spent the past 12 years teaching my son about all the influences to be wary of in our modern world—media, politics, tech, peers, etc.—how they operate, what they want, why it’s bad, and how to not fall for the tricks and tactics by those trying to influence him. Then he got to an age where he noticed that he knew these things—but most adults didn’t.
It was confusing for him to have the belief system for example, that screens weren’t good for him, or advertisements were just attempts to manipulate him, which seemed contrary to public opinion of most adults. I realized then, when he made this complaint, that I had saddled him with this great “knowing” and it was uncomfortable for him to be the only one in a room to know it, especially when you’re the only child.
You expect the adults to know what’s best. It seemed to him like they did not. He asked me—why don’t you tell everyone? So, I set out to write a book on these conversations to make sure other adults know these things too.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I knew I wanted to write about this big idea of “influence” through the lens of my experience both wielding it and falling prey to it. I felt guilty for the work I used to do in marketing and branding and wanted this book to be my coming clean, my mostly repentant penance.
But I didn’t know how to structure such a big concept until a fellow writer friend asked me what the goal was. I said I wanted to take people from under the influence, to above the influence. While I’d been ruminating on this concept for a few years, having written several drafts of proposals that didn’t feel just right, it wasn’t until she said “It’s an apology letter and roadmap of your misadventures” that I was able to give it it’s form. That was 2019.
I went home and drew up the structure and dumped all my essays into each section following that framework, sent a halfcocked email to another writer friend for a thumbs up or down, and then started the work of finding an agent who “got it.” My agent at the time was more into the idea of me writing an actionable, practical, digital wellness self-help guide as that was what I was known for as the founder of Folk Rebellion and the zeitgeist was perfectly timed and aligned for a book of that kind.
But for me, it always felt like something much bigger. This wasn’t about the influence of technology. This was about influence at large. I sent that email in October 2019. It’ll have been four years since that moment when I publish on October 10, 2023.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
A million! But the biggest surprise was that all the experience in the world in writing, marketing, digital, media, etc., doesn’t make you experienced at publishing. This was another language with another time schedule and another system I was not well-versed in.
In many ways, even as an award-winning strategist and published writer, I was as green behind the ears as someone who never wrote or worked a day in corporate. In some ways, it probably made things harder as I was used to getting in the kitchen, but you know what they say about too many cooks….
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Yes, a big one. I discovered that I write to find the words for what I am trying to say. I guess deep down I knew that, but I’d never heard it put that way. I have an overarching point I am trying to make and it’s not until I am at the keyboard that how I arrive there, what story I tell, what research I include starts to show itself. Because of that, I was surprised to learn that the more I structured and pre-planned, it rung the voice out of my writing and the meandering slow show of hand I am so good at—disappeared.
So, I needed the ability or permission to ramble and wander all over, so those threads had a chance to connect. I needed to write unscripted, unplanned as much as possible to be voice heavy, get what I wanted to say out. I could have it make sense later on.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope that they become aware of what’s happening to them. Most of us don’t even realize how much we are being influenced, maneuvered, and manipulated throughout each day. Entities are influencing our identity and behavior in profound ways that benefits them—not us. This limits our happiness, freedom, and well-being and the solutions that we have bought into only keep us more deeply tied to the systems that are abusing us.
We need to wake up if we want to become free from it. It’s not tricks, tasks, and lifestyle changes—it’s a shift of mindset in how we view the world. If I can open your eyes to influence, then you can hope to escape it.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Each lens is unique, built upon a lifetime of influences. Trust your vision. Especially when people have differing ideas for your book/proposal/essay/etc., recognize that they are under influences of their own. Hold tight, hold firm on your idea and how you want it to live in the world.
Someone telling you to change something, consider something else, has their own motivations and lens through which they view the world. Your book, your work, is YOUR view and you shouldn’t concern yourself with a suggestion that’s under the influence of, say, (gasp!) a trend or worse yet an algorithm.