Matter of Craft with Ellie Eaton
In this edition of Matter of Craft, Ellie Eaton, author of The Divines chats with us about capturing the messiness and ugliness of youth, unglamorous writing routines, writing like no one is watching and exploring nostalgia.
In Kimberly King Parsons' praise for The Divines, she mentions that the novel explores “the blurry lines between nostalgia and obsession,” which I think is such a great way to describe the messiness that Joesphine encounters as an adult. As a writer, why was this something you wanted to explore? What does nostalgia of one's youth mean to you?
I love Kimberly’s take on the book. The mess of life, as you say, the emotional debris, the slip-ups and mistakes, have always interested me far more than narratives tied up in neat little bows. There’s sometimes this inclination in contemporary culture—particularly on the screen—to mythologise the teenage experience. It’s often given a kind of cinematic sheen, presented as a wonderfully hedonistic, carefree chapter of our lives, a time when we’re accountable to nothing and no one, before the reality of adulthood kicks in (career, parenthood, marriage). When I was writing The Divines I was much more interested in the original 17th Century sentiment behind the concept of nostalgia; the Greek words nostos (meaning homecoming) and alga (signifying pain). In the book, Josephine attempts to strip away the layers of gloss and sentiment surrounding her memories and somehow get to the truth of her years as a Divine, ugly, embarrassing and exposing as that might be.
While the story mainly focuses on Josephine as a teenager, we do have many chapters throughout that show her grappling as an adult with her life as a newlywed and new mother but mostly her coming to terms with her teenage self and how that has shaped her adult self. Can you speak about that choice to shift back and forth through time?
These two elements of the narrator’s experience of being a woman—adult Sephine and teenage Joe—seem kind of inseparable to me. One section wouldn't work without the other. As a grown-up Sephine has the safety net of wealth and educational privilege to be able to escape her past, to leave St John’s and not look back. It’s only when she becomes a wife and parent—specifically the mother of a girl—that she’s forced to reexamine her time at school. There’s still a lot of pressure put on mothers to act as some sort of exemplar to their daughters, perfect role models, neatly juggling home life with career (as if such a thing were possible). In reality, Sephine is barely able to define herself, a woman who, in her mid thirties, struggles to say the word ‘vagina’ out loud. From a plotting point of view, working with these two separate time periods let me play with the idea of how reliable any of us might be as the narrators of our own stories, how we unconsciously or consciously reshape our memories to make them feel more palatable.
The Divines is a thrilling story and I’d love to know how you plotted the pacing of the novel. Did this come naturally with the story or was it something that required more planning or attention?
Thank you! Honestly, I didn’t go into the novel with the intention of writing something particularly fast-paced, but there was a kind of involuntary urgency to the process. At the time I was a new mother, unable to find paid work due to visa restrictions. Motherhood is a privilege, but suddenly my entire creative life was restricted to the pre-dawn hours, snatches of writing time while my daughter was napping. As a result I was exhausted, a little bitter at the unexpectedly domestic turn my life had taken, and furious about the state of contemporary politics—the Brexit debate back home in Britain, the rise of Trumpism. What resulted was a furious first draft. It required a lot of rewriting and shaping (I owe a huge debt both to my glorious agent, Julia, and the sharpest of editors, Liz) but I think the pacing of the book came from this sensation of having a ticking clock while I worked.
Did you outline The Divines before writing it? What did your process look like?
I’m in awe of those writers who make chapter plans and stick rigidly to daily word counts. Alas, I’m not one of them. Usually a manuscript starts with a single line, or a phrase—in this case, I am Divine—and I tug on that string until, little by little, the idea for the book unravels. Characters, setting, general themes. Then I have the task of untangling the mess I’ve made and knitting the novel together. I have three large boards on the walls of my study which I paper with character notes, photographs and thoughts. It’s a mess, until suddenly it isn’t.
Can you share your writing routine with us? Take us through a day in your life.
There is zero glamour, let’s put it that way. I recently saw a photo of an author writing her latest novel on a beach and let out a loud, envious sigh. Not just because of the tropical setting. I wish I was more flexible, but I’m too easily distracted to be able to work outside or in a cafe, or even a library really. I need a blank wall to stare at. My best writing—the golden hours as Hilary Mantel puts it—is always done pre-dawn, barely conscious, before I’ve had to engage with the world. I get up around 5 or 5.30am, stick in my earplugs, and, if I’m not in charge of the school run, try and get in three uninterrupted hours. No internet, no food, no telephone, absolute silence. After that I drink a jug of coffee while I read—almost always short stories (thank you Electric Lit and Lithub)—eat something, and then try and push on till lunch. I realised a long time ago that I’d be doing myself a huge favour if I removed any kind of decision making from the process. I wear exactly the same outfit each morning (a kind of padded housecoat that my husband brought back from a work trip to Korea) and eat exactly the same breakfast (a bowl of citrus fruit and crispbreads dunked in my black coffee). Obviously, this whole routine was blown out of the water during COVID. Recently I’ve been having very elaborate fantasies about a writing hut at the bottom of a garden, somewhere where I can pace and talk to myself as much as I like and no one has to tip-toe around me. We rent and have a concrete slab in lieu of a yard, but still, I can dream.
What was a piece of craft advice that helped you while writing this novel?
My first writing advice came from the Australian poet Kate Llewellyn. I was working in a motel in Australia at the time, scrubbing bathtubs and scribbling under the reception desk at night. Once a week I caught the ferry into the city to take Kate’s class at the University of Sydney. She encouraged me to take my writing seriously, to ‘put things in envelopes’ as she called it, send it out into the world. The most useful piece of craft advice she gave me—one which I clung to working on The Divines—was the importance of not writing with anyone standing over your shoulder. By which I think she meant I should free myself of judgement, be fearless, unafraid to explore the dark corner. I wanted to lean into the physical in this book, really inhabit the teenage body...the pus and sweat and blood. I couldn't have done that if I thought too much about a future reader—my mother, say—looking over my shoulder.
If you could make a playlist for The Divines, what are a few songs you might put on it?
A true child of the 90’s, I love a good mixtape, and was very excited when Ryan (my genius marketing director) asked me to pull together a Spotify playlist for The Divines (http://bit.ly/DivinesPlaylist ). Massive props to my best friend Lucy who unearthed a bag full of old cassettes from the attic—Massive Attack, Portishead, Sweet Love (jungle version) —a teenage time capsule.
What was the last book you read that you would want to recommend?
I just finished The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, which is exactly as brilliant as every review says it is. On the non-fiction front I’m loving Kate Zambreno’s Heroines, which I picked up at des pair books. They’re this new female fronted independent in Echo Park with a small but phenomenal selection. And a dog. The dream bookshop basically.
Ellie Eaton is a freelance writer, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Observer and Time Out. Former Writer-in-Residence at a men’s prison in the UK, she holds an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and was awarded a Kerouac Project residency. Born and raised in England, she now lives in Los Angeles with her family. The Divines is her first novel.
