A conversation with Eleanor Anstruther

I’m one of those weirdoes who reads the instruction manual back-to-back before using a new gadget. As a child I’d go through the step-by-step instructions on how to change Optimus Prime into a truck, before actually playing with the toy.

Eleanor Anstruther

almost certainly didn’t have an Optimus Prime toy, but if she had, I doubt she’d have read the instructions first. And yet, when it comes to our writing we’re perhaps the opposite way around. We approach serial fiction with very different techniques, Eleanor writing and editing a polished manuscript before publishing, and me writing live to the page with little in the way of a safety net.

One of the great pleasures of the fiction community that has emerged on Substack, and in the newsletter space more generally, is its diversity of thought. Eleanor writes literary fiction, I write science fiction and fantasy. A typical literary festival would never think to program us on the same panel event, or in conversation, and yet here we are, having a good old natter.

I think it’s a bit of a shame that the book world is so immediately split into silos. Speculative fiction has its conventions. Literary fiction has its book festivals and awards. And yet the most exciting and fascinating conversations are often when you cross the streams, and observe the differences and similarities across very different types of fiction.

As Eleanor put it recently:

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Meanwhile.

Thanks for watching and reading. I’m currently sat in a courtyard in Avignon writing this, while my son sits across the table sketching his latest comic. My favourite part of going on holiday has always been finding a quiet moment and a place in which to get some words down. My son being old enough to now join me in these creative gaps is extra special.

Of course, the main thing my brain is doing when visiting a new place is absorbing the architecture and culture and smells and all of that, all of which then filters down into my fiction. Don’t be surprised if a vineyard shows up randomly in the Triverse finale.

Right, hope you all have very good weeks.