Liv Little: “I Don’t Want To Do The Same Thing Forever”

It feels really emotional actually. This week is a year since my dad died, so there are all of those feelings coming up, but there’s also this feeling of intense excitement that I’m going to be releasing a piece of work I’m proud of. It’s me in a book, well not me in a book, but in terms of my heart and how I see the world. I hope people will read it and it will touch their hearts somehow. I’m someone who leads with my heart in the work and writing that I do, so I’m really excited, it feels really good.

It’s a huge accomplishment. I’m getting a bit more comfortable with being like ‘I did that in one of the most challenging years of my life personally’, for me that’s a testament to the healing powers and transformative nature of storytelling. It’s so expansive – the world and the characters you create – the freedom and fun that comes with that. So as much as it’s a big job, and it can be hard, it’s also really fun, and to be able to write, for that to be a career, is not something everyone gets to do.

It’s a love letter to community, family, friends, romance, and the people that mean a lot to us. But it’s also about the challenges and the things that might block us from showing up to love. What happens when life gets in the way, and when we can’t see all those things in front of us? I think we all go through moments in life when it can be hard to see the light.

But it’s also really joyous and funny and Elsie’s charming. You need all of those sides of light and dark I think to come through, because that is just life and her life is big, messy and complicated, that’s what it is to be human.

There’s something about, like you say, the assumption that you should have it all together because you’re at a certain point in your life. And actually, here is a character that’s been through real things in her life, it’s not theoretical or hypothetical. Elsie’s someone that’s had to be responsible from a young age. She’s had caring responsibilities with siblings and she’s had to be very self-sufficient. At what point does she just get to live and experience life? Those are all things that are very real, and even though we’re not the same, as a writer, you draw on some of the feelings you experience in your life.

I don’t know when I even decided to write sex, but it was obviously going to be part of it. Elsie uses sex in different ways, and there are lots of variations depending on who she’s having it with. I was really trying to channel the power dynamics and the ways that it happens: the confidence and the nervousness. Is she in control? When does that flip and who does it flip with? These are fun things to explore, and it was fun to write.

Sex is a part of life, it’s a part of Elsie’s life and how she shows her strength and power in many ways, it’s something that she’s good at, so it’s a space that feels comfortable for her. It’s messy and it can be awkward, it’s not all perfect and put together and it’s not all super romantic.

I think one of the things that being in a relationship has taught me, especially being in a relationship with another Black woman, is that it can be very illuminating, like holding up a mirror to all of the uncomfortable and beautiful parts of yourself. It’s really forced me to grow as a human being. I think there’s some of that energy in this book, like how are the characters mirroring or learning from each other? I think they all hold up a mirror to each other in many ways, and that’s how life and relationships work.

Elsie is painfully cool and smart. In terms of creating the work, it was really natural and easy. When I envisioned Elsie’s tone of voice, I completely envisioned Kai. I knew what I wanted the poems to say, and what they’d be about, but I knew they would be the one to take it to that place. Really being able to capture the essence of what I was trying to get across with each of them was so special.

It’s a mixture. When getting into the meat of the project I had five days away, and I wrote a chunk of it there. It was about getting the character and the start of the story down on the page, and then you’re juggling everything else. The writing process is a mixed bag. I needed to have the discipline to get it done. But I had all of this stuff inside of me that I just wanted to say, so it was ready to come out.

Had I been in my early twenties and not lived so much, I think the depth I would’ve been able to draw on wouldn’t touch people in the same way. That’s one of the things about fiction, it takes time.

This is just the first piece of fiction. I’ve written short stories before, but this is my first novel, and there’ll be so many more to come. I’m sure I’ll continue to evolve with each piece of work and I think that’s incredibly exciting. We don’t stay the same version of ourselves forever. And how boring would it be if we did? I don’t want to do the same thing forever. I want to really live in the world.