On sibling love, sobriety and novel-writing as a form of play with Coco Mellors
An extract from my recent interview with Coco as we celebrated the paperback publication of Blue Sisters
You can purchase Blue Sisters in paperback here.
I recently had the privilege of sitting down with the wonderful Coco Mellors, author of two best-selling novels Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Blue Sisters. The event was organised by Waterstones in celebration of the paperback release of Blue Sisters and our conversation veered from the inspiration behind her latest novel to the details surrounding her writing process.
The below transcript is a condensed version of our conversation which was gloriously long and could have gone on for several hours more. I hope you enjoy it!
On returning to the Blue Sisters…
Emma-Louise Boynton: You finished writing Blue Sisters a while ago, in the summer of 2023 to be precise, so it’s been some time since you’ve been in the literary trenches with the Blue Sisters. What’s it like returning to these characters now, as you go through the process of promoting the paperback?
Coco Mellors: I think in some ways, the characters never really leave me, and I knew that from Cleopatra and Frankenstein because that’s a book I started when I was 25. I’m now 35, so it’s been a decade, and those characters are still so alive for me. With Blue Sisters, I sort of knew that once I create a character, they’re for life. I live inside of them, and they live in me. But I am so deep inside my third book at the moment. I feel like I’m neck-deep in that work, so when I talk about Blue Sisters, I’m also sort of like, “Who?” I’m obsessed with what I’m writing now. That’s the lovely thing about being a writer: it’s a very forward-looking career. You’re always propelling towards the next thing.
Emma-Louise Boynton: You once described writing a novel to me as akin to a love affair. Does this third book which you’re deep in the weeds of currently feel like that?
Coco Mellors: I know I said that, but…. I was talking to my therapist recently about how hard I’m finding writing my third book and I was like, ‘you know, Blue Sisters was just such a joy, it was a love affair. It just flowed out of me.’ And she responded: “What are you talking about? Every single week we sat there and you said, ‘I'm never going to finish it. It's so difficult. It's not working. It's the worst thing I’ve ever written.’”
And I was like, “No, I didn't,” because that's what I'm saying now about my new book.
So it was good to remember that it was never so smooth sailing. So I actually think probably when you're in a book, as I'm experiencing again now, it is much more like a marriage. Once the shine has worn off, it’s about daily devotion and finding ways to make it feel new again. Luckily, I love being married so….
(I got sent this yellow suit from Stine Goya the other day and I am OBSESSED!)
Exploring the complexity of sibling love…
Emma-Louise Boynton: While we’re on the topic of love, Blue Sisters has at it’s centre the messy, complex sort of love that characterises sibling relationships. What drew you to wanting to explore this specific dynamic?
Coco Mellors: I’m really close to my own siblings. My sister is here tonight, and I’m close to my brother as well. I feel so much of my identity is formed in reaction to them. I think sibling relationships are completely unique. They’re often the only person who knows what it’s like to have your parents. There is no “before them”—they’ve always been there, if you’re lucky. It’s a fascinating bond to explore. Sibling love is hopefully unconditional, but it’s often tested. The fights I’ve had with my sister should probably be illegal, but she’s also the person I love most on earth.
Emma-Louise Boynton: Someone said to me recently that love, the enduring, long-term kind, is someone bearing witness to your life. It’s someone saying ‘I’ve seen all of it, the good days and the bad, the highs and the lows, and I am here for it all.’ She was talking about romantic love, but actually it’s a sibling really, should you be lucky enough to have one, who truly bears witness to the entirety of your life.
Behind the title ‘Blue Sisters’…
Emma-Louise Boynton: Before you set out to write Blue Sisters you had the title and you had your first line, “A sister is not a friend.” Tell us about the significance of both these things as the starting point for the book?
Coco Mellors: With Cleopatra and Frankenstein there was something unexpected about the title. They were these historical figures that shouldn't go together, and yet somehow do, and that creates a sense of dynamism. By contrast, Blue sisters felt almost familiar to me. And Blue worked not just because It's their surname but because it’s the tone of the book. Blue can be hopeful. It can be a clear sky. But Blue can also be the depths of grief. It can be the ocean and the darkness. Blue is a very potent colour that has a lot of symbolism.
And then that opening line, “a sister is not a friend”. I started this book when I hadn’t even sold Cleopatra in Frankenstein yet and had just been rejected by the 30th publisher so I was in the process of resubmitting it. And there is a freedom, I think, when you’ve been told ‘no’ by everyone. And so I thought, with my next book, I'm just going to come out swinging, I'm not going to apologise, I'm not going to be shy, I'm just going to make a statement, and you can disagree with it. That's the point, you know. You could read that line and say, my sister is my best friend, but that means you’ve already engaged with the book.
Being bold is not my natural way of being, but sometimes I try to write in the voice that I wish I lived in a little bit more, which is a lot more confident than I can often feel. So, it's a confident opening of a book.
What makes a really good novel, no matter what the genre is, whether it's romantic fantasy or sci fi, is that it makes you feel. And if the author is not feeling, the reader's not going to feel anything either. It's impossible to do this job and not be connected to your own emotional compass.
On addiction and sobriety…
Emma-Louise Boynton: Addiction plays a significant role in both Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Blue Sisters. You got sober at 26 after struggling with alcoholism, and said an interview a while ago that you would never not write about addiction. What do you specifically want to explore about addiction in your writing? Is there a specific experience or message you want to convey to your readers?
Coco Mellors: I don't think that fiction specifically should ever be didactic. So I'm much more interested in asking questions in fiction than I am in providing answers. I think the reader provides the answer, the author asks the question.
Every writer, every artist on some level, is looking for what they are uniquely capable to talk about. What is it that you have a perspective on? What is it that you feel confident writing about and feel you have something to offer that maybe hasn't been seen before? And for better or worse mine is addiction.
I come from a family in which there's a lot of addiction through the generations and, luckily, a lot of recovery between the generations too. I felt that I could therefore write about it as someone who's experienced addiction personally and as someone who's experienced other people's addictions. I wanted to explore it from both sides in the book. So in Blue Sisters, Avery is 10 years sober, Lucky is in active addiction, and Bonnie is a witness to both.
Going back to what I said before, I don’t have a message but I do have a of point of view, which is that I feel really, deeply compassionate, both to the person experiencing addiction, because I know how that feels, and also to the damage it does for everyone around you and how real that is.
I'm always drawn to writing about the things we find hard to talk about, and one of the hardest things on earth to talk about is alcoholism and addiction, especially in our families. And I know that I am not alone in having experienced it in mine. So it's very potent ground as a writer.
Books are such sacred places for us. There are things that I can read about and write about. It's so private when you read a book, it's a place that you can go, and you can feel everything, and you can sort of move through things in your own life, and no one else has to know. And I think especially for topics like this, I wanted to offer that to other people, you know, because I needed it myself. And I think anything that I talk about a lot, I should be writing about, and I spend a lot of time talking about recovery, so it felt like something worth writing about.
Emma-Louise Boynton: How has sobriety influenced you as a writer?
Coco Mellors: The gift I got when I got sober is that I could experience my emotions again. And that was also the curse. I had to experience my emotions from start to finish. That was hard since, for me, when I have a feeling, I have to change it because on some level I don't believe that I'll survive it. Or if it's good, I want it to last forever, whereas if it's bad, I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. The fastest way to do that for most people is through substances. But now I just have to feel my feelings and that is so critical to the writing process.
What makes a really good novel, no matter what the genre is, whether it's romantic fantasy or sci fi, is that it makes you feel. And if the author is not feeling, the reader's not going to feel anything either. It's impossible to do this job and not be connected to your own emotional compass.
Scott Fitzgerald said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” And I really believe that.
Emma-Louise Boynton: Your characters are incredibly nuanced. How do you go about crafting them?
Coco Mellors: For me, it’s all about contradictions. Avery, the eldest sister, is perfectionistic and responsible, but she acts out in ways that surprise even herself. Bonnie is a professional boxer, but she’s conflict-averse in her personal life. Lucky, the youngest, is adrift but has a clarity about the family dynamics that no one else does. These contradictions make them feel real to me.
The writing process…
Emma-Louise Boynton: Let’s talk about your writing process… When you’re writing, do you have your reader front of mind?
Coco Mellors: I never think about an audience at all. I think about writing to one person. It's a communion between me and whoever needs to read what's being written. It's quite a sacred relationship. And then when I do these kind of events, I get to meet that one person over and over again, and I think: you're the one, you’re who I was writing for. And it really moves me. The thing that I hear that makes me feel the most determined to keep working, even when I find it hard or it’s not going well, is when someone says: you managed to describe exactly how I felt, but I was never able to put it into words.
And I know how that feels, because writers have done that for me my entire life. I've been a reader much longer than I've been a writer. So I know what that is like. I know what a gift that is. I know how life affirming that is, and how loneliness-destroying that is. So when I hear that, and especially when I hear from people who have difficult sibling relationships, or loving sibling relationships that have been troubled; when I hear people who have dealt with addiction in their family; when I hear from people who have lost family members, I just feel like I'm doing the right kind of work. It just it makes me feel incredibly lucky.
Emma-Louise Boynton: Do you have specific writing rituals or habits? Are you writing everyday?
Coco Mellors: I’m not a “5 a.m. writer” type [and I don’t write everyday!]. I need it to feel like play, there has to be a part of it that maintains the true creative spirit of this being a process of making art.
Novels last a lot longer than the initial excitement and inspiration, so you just can't rely on that. It's just steam and it runs out. So I'm much less interested in a daily routine and more interested in maintaining momentum over time, because novels are multi-year projects, and the way for me to maintain momentum is less about daily ritual and more an overarching sense of: how do I make this enjoyable, and how do I keep moving forward, even when it's hard?
I also take daily imagination walks. I'm a huge believer in protecting the thought space. The number one thing we've given away as a culture is our ability to just think and just be present in how our mind works, in our imagination. Often, when I sit down to write and there's nothing there, it's because I have not taken the time to imagine what I'm working on. And ideally, when you sit down to write a scene, you should have gotten to a place where it’s kind of spilling out of you, at least at the start.
Physical movement is also really important. And I listen to music to tap into the emotional tone of a scene.
I’m also a huge believer in deadlines, which is why I love workshops. They force you to show up, even when you don’t feel like it.
Emma-Louise Boynton: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Coco Mellors: If you want to write a book, you will. The doubt, the procrastination, the wrong turns—that’s all part of the creative process. Join a workshop, find your people, and keep going. Writing is a collaborative act, even when it feels solitary.
Favourite novel: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
Recent reads: City of Nightmares by Judy Kim, Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott, and Wild West Village by Lola Kirke.
Coco is currently writing her third novel.
Every time I sit down with Coco I feel so re-galvanised in my own writing and excited by the creative process surrounding it, so I hope you enjoyed this snippet from our conversation as much as I did.
All the love,
Emma-Louise xx