In the Haven with Alissa DeRogatis: Call it What You Want

Written & Interviewed : By Hannah Corbett

This is what happens when you give a girl a little heartbreak, Taylor Swift,  and a blank Google Doc. 

When Alissa DeRogatis posted a TikTok about the book she was writing — a story about a situationship — she had no idea it would change her life. She wasn’t trying to go viral. In fact, she didn’t have that many followers at the time. She just posted it one day and somehow, it hit home. Thousands of girls started commenting, saying they related, that they felt seen, that they’d been there too.

And just like that, a situationship turned into a bestselling book.

Two years after  publishing Call It What You Want on June 2nd, I had the privilege of sitting down with Alissa to talk about her journey.

“I was just talking about my feelings,” she said. “I wasn’t even dating this guy, but he broke my heart, so I wrote a book about it.”

Going back to the very beginning of the book stages, I got to know a little more about the real life version of CIWYW. The summer they ended things was hard. All her friends were in serious relationships, and she was frustrated that no one seemed to understand how much she had lost. This person had been in her life for five years. So, while visiting her dad in Florida, she found herself reading constantly and that’s when the idea struck her.  She wanted a book that didn’t end with a traditional happily ever after — especially not with someone you shouldn’t be with. She couldn’t find a book about a situationship, so she decided to write one herself.

Alissa tells me that before this book, the longest thing she’d written was a 10-page research paper.  She was a communications major.  “I wrote fun articles and personal essays, very cosmo-esque…kick started my career in social media working for companies like Cambell’s and Bojangles.  But after posting the first TikTok about the book got 200,000 views overnight and gained two or three thousand followers — not a huge number, but enough for her to realize there was an audience.

“People wanted this book,” she said. “If it could help someone in a situation like mine, I wanted to help.”

At first, the book was just from Sloane's point of view. But after the first draft, she realized something was missing. When she added Ethan’s perspective, it felt complete. She started writing without an outline, beginning with the prologue. She knew she wanted the characters to meet on move-in day in New York — a city she always dreamed of living in. Writing it was hard at first because of her heartbreak, but looking back, she said, “It feels like a different lifetime.”

While the story was inspired by her life, not everything happened exactly as she lived it. She pulled out important fights, swapped frat parties for bars, and shaped the story around the emotions that mattered. When she posted the TikTok, she had about 30 pages done. She was working in an office five days a week, but every night she’d come home, walk her dog, eat dinner, then write. Passion drove her. “People would ask, ‘How do you have time to write?’ but I was so driven. I wouldn't say it was revenge, but I just knew something was there.”

So when the book was finished. She self-published on Amazon.

“Everyone thinks Call It What You Want is a love story,” she said. “But flip it over, and it’s really not. It’s anticlimactic.” She talked about Taylor Swift’s album Reputation — her least favorite she admits— but this one night she was listening to the acoustic version of Call It What You Want  by Taylor, and it almost felt like the title.  And then the next day driving to work.  Listening to All Too Well (10 minute version) The lyric, “I was thinking on the drive down, anytime now he’s gonna call it love, you never called it what it was,” resonated with her.

To Alissa, that relationship was the biggest of her life, but maybe to him it was just a blip, and to her mom, maybe nothing at all. The title is perfect because it’s up for interpretation — was it a relationship? A situationship? That’s for the reader to decide.

Before the book, Alissa’s entire identity was wrapped up in him. It didn’t matter that she had cool jobs or interests. “I used to wear clothes that were too big on me. I’d wear a sweatshirt to the bar and wonder why no guys were hitting on me,” she said. Being with him made her insecure — which was weird for someone as extroverted as she is. There was one text from him that stuck with her — “Maybe one day we’ll find our way back.” She re-read it recently, within the last 6 months or so, but that's not what gave her closure. Instead, it was the messages from strangers responding to the book that finally did it. 

When I asked where Sloan, the main character of Call It What You Want, would be today, Alissa was quick to say, “In therapy. For sure.” Probably still in New York, probably in a relationship, and definitely not thinking about Ethan.

A dream of hers? For Call It What You Want to become a movie. “If that happens, I don’t even need to get married. That’s it.”  Now, Alissa is focused on starting a writing club and making sure she doesn’t burn out.

“I never want to not have this job,” she said.

Her next novel, Finding Love in the Cereal Aisle, is coming out next summer — a completely new story she’s researching and crafting from scratch.

Alissa never set out to be a viral author. She just told the truth. And in doing so, she gave thousands permission to feel what they were already feeling. Because heartbreak is crushing, and lonely — until it isn’t. Until someone else says, “Oh my God, me too.” Then it's encouraging, and mutual. 

And sometimes the story that hurts the most is the one that helps everyone heal.