Elissa Elliott — What Is An Artist?
As part of an ongoing series, I interviewed 15 artists when we were all in residency at Chateau Orquevaux in 2022.
Elissa Elliott is the author of “Eve: A Novel”, a favourite selected by both Random House and Target Stores Book Club. A recipient of multiple writing grants, she has also optioned a screenplay based on her memoir, and earned a Pushcart Prize nomination. With a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Kent’s Paris School of Arts and Culture, she is now at work on her next novel.
It was a privilege to interview Elissa during our time as the only two writers at our artist residency in France — an unforgettable exchange that deepened my admiration for her talent, insight and storytelling prowess.
So, what is an artist?
Hmm, I think the easiest answer would be someone who sees the world in a very personal way and then tries to create something out of that.
I like that, it’s really succinct. So then, what makes Elissa an artist?
Oftentimes I think that an artist in general has gone through certain experiences and has felt things very deeply, and they will try to write through that. I think that with my experiences with my parents, and with the abuse in a religious setting, I never felt like I was being told the truth. Whatever the truth is. You know, I think everyone’s searching for their truth, and I don’t think it’s a black and white thing, but that’s what I do in my writing. I just want to write it really real, and sometimes that comes across really dark because I see the world as more raw, and more up and down, and more difficult.
So, what does that mean to me, and my writing? I think I try to create poignant stories that speak to the heart, and to speak to the human condition. Like, down to the bone. And as long as I stay true to that true, true feeling of what it feels like in that moment, then I think I can connect to you. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been in that experience, you can still go, Oh yeah, that’s that feeling.
Good writers can do that, make it resonate regardless of whether you’ve had that experience or not.
Yeah, I try, but I think oddly enough, even if we haven’t gone through the same experiences, when you read it feels like a conversation with that person. When you finish a book, you either liked it or didn’t, but there’s still a sense of disappointment because you’re no longer with them. And I’m fully aware of the fact that, to me, my book is different to the reader’s perspective. And so I have to release that and let the readers each have their own opinion of the book. And they could misunderstand the book. They might not even get what I was trying to say, but that’s their experience of it.
It is an interesting thing to create something and to put it out there and just not know what people think of it.
And you have to be okay with that. And be okay with people absolutely hating it.
It’s not personal.
No, it’s not personal. It’s just that they don’t like it.
So tell me, have you had any formal training in writing?
No, I read profusely when I was a kid. And that was what we did to escape, you know? At school I did lessons in maths and science. I did that whole thing, and I actually stopped reading for pleasure in seventh grade, because we had such a difficult high school. But later in high school we started reading all the classics. We had to read a book a month. So I really feel like I got grounded in a lot of the classics and a lot of older books, Newbery winning books, things like that.
When did you start reading for pleasure again?
I stopped in seventh grade, and then I read only assignment books through high school and college. And even in teaching I had no time to read. It wasn’t until I was 30, when we went away that year for my husband’s fellowship, that I started reading profusely. I wanted to write a children’s book, a middle grade book, and so I started reading all the middle grade books, to catch up. And then I just started reading fiction, and I started re-reading, and I realised that fiction had changed quite a bit. The writing had changed. It was much faster. It was much more plotted. So I just took a tonne of classes and workshops.
Online or in person?
No, in person. We have this place, the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and I applied for their mentor/menteeship program. There are 12 people in a year; four fiction, four non-fiction and four poetry. And they would have two poets, two non-fiction writers and two fiction writers come throughout the year. So we would all learn all of those things together. That was in 2003, and I think that was the first year I realised that those instructors, although they were great teachers, they couldn’t tell us how to be good. They couldn’t tell us what makes you good.
I did get some really cool tips from them, though. I learned one cool tip from a poet who had read one of my short stories, which was part of my memoir. In the story, my dad and grandmother were at the dinner table, talking about free will, whether it exists or not. Like, does god know before we do something that we’re going to do it? Or do we just do it, and then god’s like, Oh, that’s what you did, and here’s the consequence. So they were debating that. I remember we had tacos for dinner, and in the story, the girl is playing with that idea. She hears her dad and grandma talking and thinks, Oh, does he know I’m gonna take a taco or not? I’m going to! No, I’m not! I’m going to! That kind of thing. Then my brother spills his milk, and my dad’s furious. He goes around slamming all the doors and shutting all the windows so he can spank my brother without the neighbours hearing. I had written that little snippet, and the poet said, You know, Elissa, this could get published the way it is, but a trick is to pick something small to highlight. In the story, when the father takes the son into the bedroom and starts spanking him, the girl plays a little rhyming game to herself, you know — step on a crack, break your mother’s back. So I titled the short story The Rhyming Game, and it got accepted into a literary magazine, and then they nominated me for a Pushcart Prize. I didn’t win, but I was so shocked. It was just that little thing — highlighting a small moment, bringing up something that might not seem important — but, you know, that’s her stress reaction. Little things like that.
But that’s the stuff that happens in life. That’s what makes it real.
Yeah. And I have also taken some online classes. One that’s really good if you are thinking of novel writing is Louise Dean. She’s in the UK, and she has this website called The Novelry. She has a whole 90 day video course on all the components you need for a book. And then she has a 90 day novel writing class, in which you should be able to write a novel in 90 days. And she leads you through it. And she has an editing class, and she’ll hook you up with agents at the end. But what she’s really good at, which I never found in anyone else, is reverse engineering books. I never knew that you could read an Ernest Hemingway book and figure out how he did it. And she just shows things to look for, like what did they put in there that made it a really good first chapter. So she’s really good. And she actually helped me try to get an agent when all that confusion was going on with my novel. Young adult or adult. I explained that, right?
No.
Oh, I didn’t! So I turned this in last year and my agent said, Elissa, it’s so beautiful, it’s like a little jewel-box of a book, but I don’t know how to sell it. He’s a really good agent, he’s at Writer’s House in New York, and I’ve had him for 18 years. And he said, You’ve not written it like a YA novel, so I can’t sell it as a YA novel. But it’s not deep enough to be an adult novel, so I can’t sell it as that either. He said, If an editor doesn’t know where to put it on the shelf, they won’t buy it. And I was like, well that’s ridiculous. What if I want to try something new? It’s like telling an artist, I know you painted a blue painting, but really what I wanted was a brown painting. So then I got to thinking, okay, this isn’t working, but I don’t want to give up on the book, because I love the book. And he obviously thought it was a good book. And then Louise Dean read it and within 20 minutes she emailed me and said, Elissa, this is beautiful. And she thought she could sell it.
Oh wow.
But she couldn’t! Her agent said the exact same thing. So I had an adult fiction editor read it, and I had a YA editor read it, and they both told me how to change it to make it either. And in the end I chose the adult version because my kids don’t really talk like teens, they’re nerds. They’re kids who have only played piano all their life, and they’re just a different breed. I mean, I know, I taught high school and they’re just those high school kids who — their vocabulary is higher, you know.
Yeah, I know those high school kids coz I’m one of them!
I’m one of them too. So I’m making it an adult book now. That’s what I came here to do. To change it, to use those suggestions and change it into an adult novel. I’m nervous that I’m not going to get done in time, but I think I will. I’m hoping to send this to my agent at the end of the residency. But that was my training, just tonnes of reading. I think I have every book on writing out there that I know of. And I’ve read every book. When I was going through the revision process, I got all the revision books and I worked through all of them. Revision, I think, is the hardest because you have to go back and you have to puzzle piece it together and figure out how it works. My original novel was over 400 pages, and this version is coming in at about 210. I’ve gotten rid of half of it.
So it’s really self-taught. But just this spring I applied for NYU’s MFA program, which is a low-residency in Paris. It’s ten days in July, ten days in January, ten days in July, ten days in January, ten days in July for two and a half years, and you do the rest of the year online. And you get your degree in Paris. But I didn’t get in.
Oh, bummer.
Yeah, I don’t know what the reason was. Was it because I wasn’t diverse enough? Was it because I was overqualified? I had glowing recommendations from my agent, and a movie director, and Louise Dean, who’s long-listed for the Booker Prize. And I had another friend who’s a famous author. So I don’t know what they wanted. Was it because I wasn’t writing what they want me to write? Or did they think, She’s had enough writing experience, she’s going to come in and be a know-it-all? So I thought, well, maybe it’s just not meant to be, and maybe I just need to focus and keep writing.
What were you hoping to get out of it?
I wanted to do two things. I wanted to learn more, I always want to learn more. Always, always, always. I love learning. I could be a professional student. And the second thing, I would really love to teach at a university level. And you either need to have an MFA, or you need to have written award-winning books. So if I could have the award-winning books, that’d be great. Then I wouldn’t need the MFA. But I would still love to do it, I feel invigorated in the classroom.
That’s actually one of my questions for a little bit down the line, but I’ll ask it now. What goals do you have for the future and what would you like to achieve?
I would love to teach. I think what I’m really good at now after having taken so many classes, one of my strengths, is to break it down. Maybe it’s my mathematical mind; it’s like a puzzle. That’s why I like Louise, because she broke it down. She was able to break down what makes something good.
Is that formulaic?
No, no, no, no. It’s just searching for what made you feel this way through this part of the book, and then this way in another part of the book. And that fascinates me, because as a reader I’m not always aware of that, you know? And just little tricks too, like sitting down with one of your favourite books and just literally handwriting it out, copying one of the paragraphs or typing it out. It slows your brain down enough that you’re like, Oh, that’s how they did it. And then you can practice doing that very thing with your own writing.
What do you mean?
So if I want to write a Hunger Games, right? I take Hunger Games and I just — I type, but you could hand write it, that would slow your brain down even more. But I just type, and then I type until I figure out the speed of it, the pacing of it. How many paragraphs does she have? Does she have a lot of white space on the page, which makes it look like it reads faster?
So everything that you’ve learned, you now want to pass on?
Yeah, I would love to because I think I could start from the very beginning and then build up students to where they could get to a pretty advanced level quickly.
You just have to get those book awards!!
I know!
Would you apply to another MFA program?
Yeah, I was thinking about it. My husband thinks I should apply again. Technically you’re supposed to apply to many, but it isn’t like I could go live anywhere else right now, so I needed something that was low residency. There are several, I just wanted NYU because it was in Paris. You can apply up to three times, but if I don’t know why I didn’t get in, then I don’t know how to change my application. I could do a different writing sample, but even then my statements would be the same. And if the reason was that I’ve already published a book, or I already know too much; and they’re looking for people who need to learn? They don’t know that I’m not that type of person. I want to go in and soak up all the information.
It really doesn’t seem like a good reason to reject someone.
I know. Unless they got so many people who were just better than me. I have no idea. You just don’t know. And so I can’t take it personally. I mean, I can’t say it’s because I suck as a writer. I’ve had enough people tell me that I’m a good writer.
So you’re currently working on revising your novel. Are you able to work on two projects at once? Do you have anything new in the pipeline?
Very rarely. That said, while I can’t write two projects at the same time, I can write a project and research a project.
So is there something else that you are working on now?
Yeah, it’s funny because the longer this revision goes on, the more I find other ideas. So, I rowed in college at UCLA and I did that for two years. And I thought, what would be a really cool TV show and book would be a female coach who is emotionally and psychologically abusive to the girls. Female team, female coach. And then all of the relationships that go with that, because I think today the kids are entitled, and they don’t work. So what’s the fine line between getting kids to work, and being honest with them? What’s the difference between honesty and abuse? And kids don’t want to hear the truth. So I think I want to do that fine line of kids needing a push, but you can’t push too hard. And do some kids react to that better or not?
But now I’m thinking, mm, I don’t know, I have other ideas I want to do too. I thought there could be a cool novel about Ukraine. There’s a book called “Bloodlands”, and since our daughter comes from Ukraine I thought it would be cool to tell that story of when the Russians came in and killed all the Jews. I mean, it was as bad as the Holocaust, and hardly anyone knows anything about it. But I thought that would be cool to have all the characters go through that and have a really in-depth novel like a Charles Dickens novel.
You have a lot of ideas.
I do have a lot of ideas, yeah.
But let me just go back to the rowing thing. Did you have that kind of abusive experience with a rowing coach?
No, my coach wasn’t — well, I don’t know, we all had different experiences. Like I said, growing up, my role was to be the pleaser. So I was always trying to do everything right. Do everything on time. Never be late for practice.
You don’t need to be pushed.
Yeah, I don’t need to be pushed. I’m self-motivated. But there were some that needed to be. I’ve done a lot of research on abusive coaches, and I have a lot of stories that are just horrible. And also, there’s that whole thing of why a kid would keep playing under that abuse. I had an emotionally abusive basketball coach. She was evil. But everyone wanted to keep playing, and they wanted the playtime. They wanted her to like them. And my husband was also abused in basketball, where the coach would just slam them up against the lockers. And he said, I never told my parents because I just wanted to play, so I figured that was what I needed to do, in order to do that.
That’s what abusers rely on.
Yeah, it’s like domestic abuse. So I thought that would be a cool topic to lead through a book. It just makes a lot of people angry. I mean, it makes me angry thinking about it.
Did you say also you’d written a TV show?
Oh yeah, so Stage 32 is a website where you can learn how to write TV shows, and you can learn how to write feature films. And they’re really good instructors. So I took a pilot writing class last fall. I also took a TV writer and showrunner class. It was just interesting, and to me I think it informs how I write novels. And I think my original novel was written more like a movie or TV show, which is why it didn’t have much backstory, because you can’t see backstory. So I think learning TV and movies helped me pace a story, but it didn’t help me slow down a story when it’s in novel form. They’re totally different. Also when you adapt it to a screenplay the question becomes, Is it important enough to be an actual dialogue scene in my movie? And you often have to combine characters, or get rid of a character completely. Oftentimes they don’t like an author to be the screenwriter because authors want to hold onto their precious material.
And you can enter competitions with the screenplay too. There’s the Nicholl Fellowship, which is through the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the one that does the Oscars. I also entered Sundance last spring, and I did get to the second round, but there were a thousand scripts. And the people who end up getting it are kind of on the fringe, like they’re doing the next thing. It could be gay relationships or queer, transgender, that kind of thing.
So tell me about someone who inspired you to write, living or dead.
I read “The Tale of Two Cities” in ninth grade, and we had to write something about it. So I wrote a poem, and I got so much praise for it. So I thought, Oh, that’s what I need to do, is write. But I never dreamed that it would be a good major to do in college or anything. That was not even on my radar. I wish it would’ve been.
I know what you mean. You just loved writing.
I just loved writing. And I never kept a diary or a journal because my mum would’ve read everything. I just felt like my whole family was in each other’s stuff. There were no boundaries. So even though I had the little red diary that you get as a kid, with the little lock and key. Nope, wasn’t gonna do it. Because I just didn’t feel like I could. I do remember my high school teacher who was really, really strict and no one liked her. But I loved her because I learned nominative case, subjective case, subjunctive mood, diagramming of words, all of that. I learned why the words were the way they were. I got a lot of praise for my writing in her class too. But when I look back, it was all very formulaic writing. She was teaching us how to write essays, You have to do this, and you have to do that. And you can’t say different than, you have to say different from. But I felt successful because it was very formulaic. That was me. And I learned all the rules. So that later I knew exactly how to break them. And now I can just write one word sentences. So I think I got that out of the way in high school, which was nice. But that’s where I think I got the feeling that I wanted to write someday.
But did she inspire you?
No. But in an odd way she did inspire me because she gave me the confidence to do it. Now as far as inspiration, you read Mary Oliver poems and it’s just like, oh, they’re beautiful. Have you read any of hers?
No.
Okay, look up Mary Oliver, because she’s amazing. And she just died recently. She’s very much a nature poet, but she’s so exuberant and she says it exactly so clearly and beautifully, that you’ll fall in love with her.
Finally, if you could go back and give yourself some advice when you first started wanting to write professionally, what would you say to yourself? And part two of that is what advice would you give to someone else? And is the advice the same?
It can’t be the same, because I don’t want to project on anyone else. First of all, I would definitely tell myself that anything goes in college. If you want to do English, do English. If you want to do creative writing, do creative writing. I was always really good in math and science, and I always knew that to get to a good school, or to get a scholarship, I needed to do that and not art. I mean, I took art classes and my art teacher begged me to keep going. And I said, I can’t, I can’t fit you in, I have to do all my math and science. My dad taught me that math is the hard sciences, and I took that to mean that’s what I should do. So I followed his instructions, but I didn’t need to. So that’s the first thing. I wish that I would’ve known that, and I wish that I would’ve had that freedom to do that. But then to go beyond that, personally, I wish I would’ve had the freedom not to get married, not to have kids. I wish I would’ve had the freedom to be just me and follow my heart wherever it led. But I think that with my background, that’s what you were just supposed to do.
So that would be my wish. I wish that I would’ve had parents that were feminists, and that could’ve showed me that direction, because I think I wasted a lot of years. Wasted, but not wasted because, it’s me. As far as anyone else, I told all my high school kids, you can do anything you want. And I would suggest you follow your passion. There is the advice that you always have to have a job that pays money, and then do what you love. But I think that if you feel sucked dry, you’re not going to enjoy it anyway. So find a way to live on lesser means, and do what you love.
Do what you love.
Yeah.
