The New York Times/Leigh-Ann Jackson: Jonny Sun’s Work Diary: Correct Spellign Optoinal, Creativity Mandatory

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Jonny Sun’s Work Diary: Correct Spellign Optoinal, Creativity Mandatory

The author-illustrator behind ‘everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too’ is writing for TV and film, plus pursuing a Ph.D. at M.I.T.

As told to Leigh-Ann Jackson

    April 22, 2019

In his orthographically freewheeling 2017 best seller “everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too,” the author-illustrator Jonny Sun explores the melancholia of life on Earth as seen through the eyes of an extraterrestrial. The inquisitive outsider, an alter ego birthed on Mr. Sun’s Twitter account, stumbles through heart-melting highs and lip-quivering lows, meeting such creatures as an owl plagued by impostor syndrome and an egg suffering from an existential crisis.

Near the end of its “activitey log,” the alien concludes: “if u replace ‘i have to..’ with ‘i get to..’ then human life becoms AMAZIMG.”

Lately, Mr. Sun has been able to say “I get to” about a lot. He collaborated with Lin-Manuel Miranda last year on “Gmorning, Gnight!”, a best-selling collection of inspirational messages, and he created an AI-powered interactive art installation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s a doctoral candidate.

Mr. Sun, an emotionally transparent Canadian who is also a humorist, artist and screenwriter, is working on a screenplay for “Paper Lanterns,” a film for Fox Family and Chernin Entertainment. He’s also writing for Netflix’s animated series “BoJack Horseman,” prepping for a talk at the TED2019 conference in April and queuing up three new books per a recently announced deal with Harper Perennial.

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“I’m always interested in very personal, kind of quirky, kind of sad and kind of funny stories about what it means to be a person,” he told me. “The ‘aliebn’ book was the first crystallized version of just one way to talk about that type of stuff. Right now, I’m in the process of stretching and pulling and seeing what other ways those ideas can be explored.”

I caught Mr. Sun, 29, in early March, as he patronized virtually every coffee shop in Los Angeles and prepared to head to the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Tex.
Monday

9 a.m. Make coffee and work on a new draft of my TED Talk. For me, it’s tough to distill and trim things to fit a time limit. I’m sort of a hoarder, in real life and also when I write. I’m trying to cram in a lot of ideas, but given that it’s a 10- or 12-minute talk, it has to be a lot simpler and more straightforward. I send it off to my TED curator — who acts as editor, mentor and emotional support — in advance of our call tomorrow.

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1 p.m. I meet a friend at Document Coffee Bar in Koreatown to write, now focusing on my “BoJack” episode. A normal week is working from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the writers’ room, but this is a little bit of an unusual week.

3 p.m. Call with Susan Benesch. We created the M.I.T. Online Humor Conversation Series together. We discuss what we’re going to talk about in our South by Southwest panel, “Online Humor in Difficult Times,” with the comedian Jaboukie Young-White.

8 p.m. Head to Balcony Coffee and Tea in Koreatown to work. I’m still new to L.A. and have been trying to explore different neighborhoods by writing in their coffee shops. I usually will get an iced matcha (Americano-style or with sparkling yuzu if available), a regular drip coffee with cream and sugar or a flat white if I’m feeling fancy.
Tuesday

11 a.m. I have a call with my TED curator to discuss my latest effort. We both think it’s not where it should be and agree to scrap that draft and approach the talk from a different angle.

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1 p.m. Meet a friend for lunch at Triniti in Echo Park. The thing that helped me really fall in love so quickly with L.A. was the food. In a weird way, it sort of reminds me of home, which is Toronto: they both have such a great food scene that doesn’t get talked about enough.

3 p.m. I have a call with an exec at Chernin to discuss the first act of “Paper Lanterns,” which I sent over a couple weeks ago. But I won’t be able to get back to writing that screenplay until after I finish writing my episode of “BoJack.” It takes me a little bit of mental ramp-up to be able to switch between these two different things. With “BoJack,” I’m working with eight other writers in a room, a group collaboration where I’m the one piecing all the ideas together. With the screenplay, it seems personal; more independent and quiet. But I think I actually like both of those modes.

8 p.m. I’ve been working hard so I treat myself to an izakaya dinner at Tsubaki. It’s almost embarrassing how much I eat out.

9:30 p.m. Go home and talk to my fiancée over the phone. We’re doing long distance for a little stretch, so we talk every night when we’re apart.

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Wednesday

9 a.m. I have to go into the “BoJack” offices for a meeting today. I also have my weekly phone call with my therapist. It takes about 45 minutes to walk to work from where I’m living, and it’s nice to walk and talk to him.

12 p.m. Work on my episode all day at Coffee for Sasquatch on Melrose. I’m definitely a headphones-on person in coffee shops, but sometimes I forget to even play music. I think part of me just likes the feeling of having headphones in; it’s like I’m preventing things from escaping out of my ears. When I do listen, lately my go-to writing music has been “A Seat at the Table” by Solange, Nina Simone and Mahalia. When I’m outlining and need more excitement, it’s “Acid Rap” and “Coloring Book” by Chance the Rapper, anything Janelle Monae, Tierra Whack, Raveena and Prince.

5 p.m. Haircut, in advance of South by Southwest.
Thursday

10 a.m. My episode is due at noon tomorrow, so I work all day on it. I’m Postmates-ing food because it’s crunchtime, and I stay home and write. What I love about working on the last day of deadline is that it almost feels like everything else melts away. Having the deadline looming is almost like a clarifying thing for me. There’s always so much stuff that feels like it needs to get done, but on those days, it feels like everything falls away and it forces me to focus on the thing that is the most pressing. It’s a mixture of both peacefulness and stress.

4 a.m. Finished.
Friday

9 a.m. I have a call with my editor at Harper Perennial in the morning, where we talk about the batch of essays and ideas I sent her on Sunday. We go over what’s working, what isn’t and discuss ideas for ordering and structuring the book. It’s a collection of short pieces — small moments and discrete little things. For the most part right now, I’m in the process of writing them in disparate places. I’ll email some to myself, or write them down in a notebook or in my Notes app. It feels a lot like scrapbooking. I think it’s nice that I get to do that while I’m balancing a long-form screenplay that’s just one long story.

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12 p.m. Pack for South by Southwest.

2 p.m. I go into the “BoJack” office. Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator and showrunner, and the writers have read my draft of the script, and they all discuss their notes with me.

4 p.m. I get a Lyft to the airport to catch my flight to Austin. During the ride, I take out my laptop — car office, woo-hoo! — and I review an audio recording from the notes session. I clarify and write comments on my script on what needs work and what needs to be edited, rewritten, moved around, etc.

6 p.m. Get to my gate. It’s three hours until we take off; I’ll spend the flight working on the new draft for my TED Talk and poking around at my episode notes.
Saturday

9 a.m. From my room, I review a festival application for “The Laughing Room,” the M.I.T. installation, that will make up a central part of my Ph.D. dissertation.

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11 a.m. Meet Susan to discuss the South by Southwest panel.

12:30 p.m. We go to an event called “We Tried to Tell Y’all: Black Twitter as a Source,” featuring activists and academics that I’m really excited to hear from: Feminista Jones, Dr. Meredith Clark, L. Joy Williams, Dr. Mia Moody-Ramirez. There are a few others that I wanted to go to (“We’re Here, We’re Queer and We’re Changing the Film World” and “How Media Fragmentation Fuels Online Toxicity”), but we skip those because we need to figure out our own panel.

5 p.m. Our talk starts. Having Jaboukie offer his insight is wonderful. I don’t think we get to hear enough from comedy people working online about how and why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s cool to talk shop with him and get Susan’s perspective from a more academic standpoint.

6 p.m. I go to the after-party for the premiere of “Ramy,” a new Hulu show created by Ramy Youssef. I try to catch the screening of “Long Shot,” but the theater is full by the time I get there, so I go back to my hotel and work on my episode for a little bit, finish the new draft of my TED Talk, then crash.
Sunday

I try to do South by Southwest stuff but I’m overwhelmed and a bit burned out. Sometimes I am energized by big crowds, but this weekend they made me incredibly anxious and overwhelmed. Instead, I find a quiet corner of a hotel lobby near the festival and have coffee all day and work. It’s still close enough that I can people-watch and feel a part of South by Southwest.

Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited.
A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2019, on Page BU4 of the New York edition with the headline: Correct Spellign Optoinal. Creativity Mandatory.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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