Behind the Mic: Elissa Elliott, Novelist

One of the on-going explorations here at Magpie Girl is the connection between Art + Spirituality.  The Magpies are adding to the giant pool of wisdom by talking about it over at Magpie Speak.  It’s been enlightening to see how this intersection works for different creative souls.

While reading some of the Magpie Speak comments, I was particularly struck by novelist Elissa Elliott’s take on Art + Spirituality. Ronna Detrick, spiritual director at Flock, wrote recently about how there’s no going back when you make an important ”ah ha” connection. Elissa’s story illustrates this powerfully motivating reality. Her experience also demonstrates how telling our stories is an incredible way to Stand in Your Own Power.

Today Elissa gets behind the mic to expand on how she lives with Art + Spirituality.  Elissa, step right up!

Q: How is Art + Spirituality interconnected for you, and how do you see that coming out in your work as a writer?

Art and spirituality are inextricably linked for me.  I never intended for them to coincide, but given that my spiritual journey is traipsing along after my writing, they’ve started to merge into one beast.  As I write, I realize there are questions I have, there are paths I’ve not explored—that I want to address in my writing.  I think it was Mark Twain who said, “I read to know I’m not alone,” and I would apply this to writing.  “I write to know I’m not alone.”

In the spring of 2006, my agent wrote me an e-mail.  Our correspondence looked like this:

Agent: What about Eve?

Elissa: You’ve got to be kidding me.  The Eve?

Agent: Yep.  Do some research.  Tell me what you think.

Elissa (after doing some research): Oh no!  The way I want to tell it, I’m not sure my family and friends will read it.

Agent: Just write the book.

So I did.  I come from a fairly conservative Christian background (although I’ve moved away from this considerably as an adult), and after deciding, early on, that the Adam and Eve story came from an earlier myth, I realized I was in trouble.  Add to this decision the fact that Biblical and non-Biblical scholars pretty much agree that Adam and Eve lived about 4000 B.C.  But, oops, there’s a plethora of archaeological evidence before that date.  What to do, what to do?  Were Adam and Eve the first Hebrew people?  Did God (if there is a God) create pockets of people, and we only know about these two?  Is the Adam and Eve story simply that—a story (similar to Jesus’ parables in the Gospels)?  The Hebrew scribes didn’t write these stories until much later, and when they documented them, they used earlier myths and changed them in two ways (they did the same thing with Noah’s Flood): they make them monotheistic and they made them moral.

How could I make everything gel, in a realistic way?  I had to stay true to my research, whatever that meant.

Maybe you’ve wondered, as I have, how Eve, who has been both revered and scorned through the centuries, really lived her life, really lived with Adam.  Maybe you’ve wondered why she has shouldered the blame for eating the infamous piece of fruit, when Adam willingly partook with her.  Maybe you’ve wondered why she was made for Adam and not with Adam.  There’s a huge difference in how we say it, isn’t there? 

While doing the research for Eve, I wanted to experience her naively, personally—as though I’d never met her before.  I wanted to think about her as a mother who ached with love for her children—one of whom murdered the other.  A wife, burdened with the same marriage hang-ups we’ve all experienced.  A woman, thrown out of the Garden of Eden without any explanation.

If you know anything about the story, there are no daughters mentioned in the religious texts, so I had to make them up.  Hence, Eve: A Novel is the story of that fateful summer leading up to Cain killing Abel, told in Eve’s voice and three of her daughters’ voices—Naava, the self-absorbed fourteen-year-old, Aya, the precocious, crippled eleven-year-old, and Dara, the naïve six-year-old.

As I neared the end of the novel, I still had God, but I had radically changed my view of Him or Her (why don’t we have a decent pronoun to use for this?!)  I began to wonder how accurate the scribes’ views of God were.  I began to wonder what He/She would look like, stripped of organized religion and all the labels we’ve plastered on Him/Her.  That God would be much bigger, much grander than I could ever imagine, and how might I go about learning about this God?

Currently, I’m working on the story of Noah’s Flood, which has been a challenge, because if you think the research for Adam and Eve was sticky, Noah’s Flood is doubly so.

My greatest desire in my art (for my art) is to create questions, so that collectively, we all might inform our own lives by talking to others of different faiths (and of no faith).

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Want to hear more from Elissa? She can be found at her blog Living the Questions, and you can dive into the pages of  her book, Eve: A Novel. 

Living the questions a lot these days? Join us at Flock, a small online community dedicated to “finding a spirituality that fits.”  Sign up  today for our introductory offer (more than half-off the standard membership price.)

Need a little inspiration? Looking for some good advice? Artists and Coaches get interviewed most Mondays at Magpie Girl. Want to be behind the mic? Send me an email telling me why Magpie Girl readers need to hear from Y.O.U. Thanks for being here.

Posted in Interviews, Magpie Girl
Tags: art + spirituality, Interviews |