Poppii King is a writer and creative with an extraordinary gift of storytelling in its purest form. She recently released her novel Look What You Made Me Do. The book speaks volumes as it relates to women around the world who have been sexually abused/assaulted or who are just overcoming a particular situation within life’s journey. King told rolling out about her new raw and inspiring novel.
Why did you write this book?
Initially, my reason for writing this book was that I wanted to bring awareness to a very important problem that I saw happening a lot as a teen in my community. I remember so many times seeing posters with young girls and even males who were wanted for purposely spreading HIV, and I felt as though it wasn’t talked about enough and almost taboo, but it was happening. I felt as though we as young people weren’t as informed as we should be, we blindly play Russian roulette with our lives, and I really wanted to spread awareness while installing a sort of fear, in hopes of encouraging more people to practice safe sex, but after sitting down to write it, it became so much more, I’ve learned so much from my own experiences, that I knew that I didn’t just want to write a story about the pain, it was important for me to implement solutions, inspiration and motivation for all those who may be going through tough times in their lives, I think the best books are always those you can learn something from.
What’s the story behind the title?
There’s really no deep story behind the title, though I wish it was. When I first began to write the book, the only thing I knew was that I was going to write about a young girl, who goes through a great deal of traumatic experiences, gets HIV and then spreads it, so after writing the first few paragraphs I decided that I would put it away. I started to think what would be the most relative title that I could use, and I figured ok, well she gets HIV then spreads it as a form of revenge, so I decided to use “Look What You Made Me Do” until I could come up with something better… but I never thought of anything and ultimately decided to just keep the title. I thought it was a title that no one would ever use, so in my head, I had come up with such a unique title… fast forward five years later and you can see just where Taylor Swift crushes that idea lol but by then I had already had my book copy written and I had it first anyway so lol there was no going back. The funny thing is that I had already had an Instagram account set up for the book way before the book was released, which is @LWYMMD, so when Taylor Swift’s song “Look What You Made Me Do” came out, I had a lot of die-hard Taylor Swift fans harassing me, and some even offering me money for the Instagram name. Lol of course I declined, but I remember I kept thinking someone was going to hack the account to get the name lol Thanks a lot Taylor lol
What do you hope readers will glean from reading your book?
There are so many different things, but the most important thing that I hope for readers to glean from reading my book is that you can overcome anything that you have gone through or may be going through in life. I have a need to give hope to those whom may be feeling hopeless, and as if life is always kicking them down, because that was once me, but I think it’s important for us all to understand that just because you may have been victimized by one thing or another, does not mean that you have to live as a victim, you can still choose to be happy. If things are seemingly going all wrong in your life, changing the way you think, changes your perspective and ultimately changes your life. As cliché as it may sound, this is 100% facts and definitely one of the things that I want readers to take away from this story.
How long did it take you to write this book?
I actually started writing the book about five years ago, but then put it away after writing the first few pages. I started to pursue other things but they weren’t things that I was naturally talented at. it wasn’t until last year that I decided that I needed to get back to writing, I felt it was important for me to use my natural talent, but once getting back to it, it was only a few months before I had it completed.
What was your regimen to complete this book?
I honestly had no specific regimen when writing this book; this is the reason that I always credit the universe for sending me this story because it almost felt as though the story was being uploaded to my brain. There was a movie playing in my head and I just wrote what I saw. It was just crazy how certain things from my own life fit perfectly for certain scenes … I would write whenever the story came to me. There would be days that I would go to write but there was nothing there, so I would put it away for a few days and sometimes even a week or two until the next scene was sent to me.
