Austinist Interview: Stephen Elliott, Author Of The Adderall Diaries

The Adderall Diaries is conceived as a true-crime investigation into the murder of Nina Reiser, but it becomes much more than that. When you were writing it, were you thinking about In Cold Blood as a model? What other influences were you working from?

I really started the book writing about writers block and the experience of going back on Adderall after getting off it. But right at that time I heard about Sean Sturgeon, who had confessed to eight-and-a-half murders to the Alameda Sheriff (he wasn't sure if one of the victims was dead). I knew of Sean through the BDSM community and we knew many people in common. And I thought of how Capote and Norman Mailer had both written true crime books that were better than all of their novels. So that's what I decided to do. But it didn't work that way.

A lot of your recent work, including My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up and your "Oral History of Myself" columns on The Rumpus, has been non-fiction or thinly-veiled autobiography. The Adderall Diaries is an interesting twist on the confessional memoir. Were you feeling constrained by the form, or trying to move it forward?

I've written four novels, but all of them are very autobiographical. I've also written a very very autobiographical collection of stories, My Girlfriend Comes To The City and Beats Me Up. The Adderall Diaries is different, both because it's a memoir, but it's also a true crime book. It's a weird mix of autobiography and reportage. For me, I found the constraints of non-fiction to be liberating, you were forced to be creative to work with the boundaries of the form. It's very different from fiction that way. Because you can't knowingly lie in a memoir, and also because other people are bound to have different memories from your own. How do you reconcile these things? Or do you? And why would anybody be interested in what you have to say?

I think a lot of the very best creative writing is non-fiction. For example The White Album, The Shah of Shahs, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and this year We Did Porn and Zeitoun.

In March, you visited Austin to write about SXSW for The Rumpus. I especially liked your article about how to make money in the arts and the rise of the "middle class artist." Can you talk about how those ideas inform your current book tour (you're visiting town to read in a friend's living room) and the "Adderall Diaries Lending Library"-- when you sent out a free advance copy of your book to anyone who would promise to pass it on when they finished?

The premise behind the lending library was that anyone could read an advance copy of the book, provided they forward it to the next person on the list within a week. This way with 50 advance copies I was able to reach 400 readers. I really just wanted people to read my book, but it kind of plays into the modern era where everyone is a potential reviewer. If we had just sent out galleys to media outlets maybe we would have one reader for every five books, this way we got at least five readers for every one book.

When that was done and the book was coming out we started to get a lot of press and I was told that I should really go on a bigger tour. But I didn't want to go to a bunch of small bookstores in small towns. That can just be really depressing. I find traveling insanely lonely. So instead I sent a note to the 400 people who had read the book through the lending library asking if anyone would like to host a reading/event in their home. So now I'm going to something like 25 cities reading in people's homes, and one of those will be Austin, which is one of my absolute favorite towns.

What was your impression of Austin and the festival?

I love Austin. Who doesn't! And SXSW was completely mind-blowing. I had no idea how good it would be. It was kind of the perfect festival, better than burning man or anywhere else I've been. There was so much to do, and so many cool people, and so much music.

You write a lot about S&M, to the point where you're now one of the most prominent voices in the country writing sensitively about people with submissive or dominant approaches to romance and sex. Do you feel like you have a political responsibility to act as a sort of representative for that community?

Yes and no. Yes, because I feel being open about your sexuality is really important. I think if we're not out of the closet than we're going to be discriminated against and marginalized. At the same time everything is not perfect in the S&M world. S&M will not solve your problems, though being honest with yourself about your desires might have real benefits. As a writer I try to tackle things as honestly as I can, and often fail. I wouldn't want to sugar-coat the S&M community and make it seem like the people in it aren't real and don't have real people problems. It's a fine line.

Do you have any rules or tips you'd like to share with budding memoirists in our audience about how to turn difficult life experience into good, readable literature?

I would say if you want to be a good writer, a literary writer, you have to do it for the love of writing. Never write for the money. Write the book you want to read. Write your favorite book, and strive to write the favorite book of your ideal reader. Don't ever write for an audience you look down on. Rewrite continually until you can justify every word and remember that the gains really come in self knowledge and expression, not in book sales. Be an idealist!