Going back to college with Ella Dawson
The author of 'But How Are You, Really'
Welcome back to a new edition of Let’s Get Drinks, a series where I sit down and chat with writers, creatives, and interesting people I’d like to get a (non-alcoholic) drink with. ❤️
When I was 25, I was pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing by night and working different jobs around Manhattan by day. I was an assistant to a Young Adult novelist, freelancing for digital publications like Bustle, and writing copy on the Social Media & Editorial team at TED Conferences. At the time I felt like a mess; I was eager to be a writer, but struggled to find my voice. Later, I would realize that those lost years had been an essential component in discovering the types of stories I wanted to tell.
It was in my time at TED Conferences that I met Ella Dawson, a Social Media Manager who had recently gone viral for writing a personal essay about being diagnosed with herpes in college. Ella was also in her twenties; she lived in Brooklyn, was fluent in sarcasm, and seemed to survive entirely on Diet Cokes and McDonalds. I liked her immediately. We struck up a friendship, first over Google Chat and, later, lunches and after-work drinks. We often talked about office dynamics and boys, and we also shared the same dream of writing books one day.
Unlike other young writers I had met, Ella wasn’t cagey or competitive when we talked about writing. She had a quiet confidence about her, likely emboldened by the knowledge that she was a gifted storyteller. I was inspired by the way she shared her writing online; whether she was talking about sex, culture, burnout, or social media, Ella had a perspective I loved to follow.
Nine years later, I am so delighted to share that Ella’s debut novel, But How Are You, Really, is out in the world. It tells the story of a burned-out bisexual who confronts old demons, her estranged chosen family, and the ex she maybe shouldn’t have walked away from when she attends her five-year college reunion. It’s one of ELLE’s Best New Books To Read This Summer and perfectly captures the ups and downs of post-college life.
Below, Ella and I chat about writing a book, why one of her main characters is sober, and going back to college. Hope you enjoy! Xx Sarah
Hi Ella! We met back in 2015 towards the tail end of the online personal essay boom. You had recently gone viral for publishing a piece about dating with herpes and I remember thinking that you were so brave. It was still considered somewhat taboo to talk openly about things like STIs (or, in my case, sobriety). Tell us a little bit about how you first started writing for an audience.
I used to be an old fashioned blogger. I started out writing about my personal experiences on a WordPress blog and I got lucky that I touched on a subject – having an STI – that very few people were talking about. A friend of a friend who worked for Women's Health invited me to write an essay for them about dating with herpes and it went bizarrely viral immediately.
A lot of people were saying, “This is your moment.” So I kept writing about herpes both on my blog and a little bit for Women's Health and it was very exciting, but also incredibly draining, grueling, and bizarre. I was in my early 20s and had a day job in social media. I didn't have a sense of what it meant to do emotional labor and how to be a public person online while writing about very private topics. I feel like I got chewed up and spat out by the Internet in some ways, but I am also very thankful for the fact that my writing did help me reach so many people and grow an audience.
I was able to take the audience that I built writing about herpes and really broaden that to relationships and sexuality in general. I didn't set out to switch to fiction with any real intention. It was more that I had burnt out from writing personal essays, and I had experiences that I needed to process and I process everything through writing. Fiction wound up being the format that made the most sense. I was in a pretty controlling relationship where I was hiding a lot of truths from myself and from my partner and the people around me, and fiction was a place for me to play with my feelings and say, “Oh, well, this is all just fiction. I'm not really writing about my life.” And before I knew it, I had written a book, and by the time it was in a place where we could sell it, thankfully, I had left that relationship.
I think I've always just followed where my wins have taken me as a writer and I'm really lucky that people have been responsive and related to what I have shared.
How long did it take you to write the book?
I was just thinking about that this morning. I had the idea for the book the weekend of my five year college reunion in 2019, and I didn't start writing it fully for another month or two. I started that fall and I finished the first draft by February of the following year. But maybe 15-20% of the first draft is in the final draft. I rewrote the plot so many times. The first draft was all internal conflict; it was all these people having big feelings and loving each other and not knowing how to deal with those feelings. There was no external conflict at all, and, thankfully, with the help of my agent, I rewrote the book from start to finish. And then we sold it in July 2022.
Your book is called But How Are You, Really and it follows Charlotte Thorne, who is back on her college campus for her five-year reunion. You and I both attended liberal arts colleges in New England and you nailed the descriptions of both the settings and culture. How did you immerse yourself in that world when you were writing?
I went to my five year reunion and it was such a bizarre, intense experience that I took a lot of notes while I was there. I go back to Wesleyan several times a year because, for a long time, I thought I had peaked in college and I just wanted to revisit my youth. I'd always felt like I had left one foot on campus, and when I started writing the book, all of it came spilling out of me in a way I didn’t expect. The setting elements, the relationship Charlotte had to the school, the memories, the parts about other alumni and following their career paths and feeling like a failure in comparison. A lot of that started to come out after my reunion when I realized I had left this so-called glamorous media job and was leaving this boyfriend who I thought that I might marry. I looked around at all my peers and they were engaged or really on track. And I felt like, “oh, my God, I'm so stuck.” I started thinking about how we feel both excited for our friends who are getting engaged but also left behind or insecure. A lot of that got worked in later drafts.
Something I found personally interesting in your book was your exploration of the ways in which people’s relationships with alcohol can change after college. What made you decide to include that? I don’t remember you being a big drinker.
I've never been a big drinker just because I'm really small and so I've always known that I have a really low tolerance for alcohol. I've always been cautious. But I still got incredibly wasted at the five year reunion. Everybody had alcohol and was playing beer pong in the dorms and drinking White Claws on the quad; it just felt so natural.
Honestly, it wasn't until I read your memoir that I was like, “Wait, that's actually really insane.” Like, why was that so normalized? Why did I never really think about it? Why was it normal that I had to help my friend, who was 27, throw up all the Carlo Rossi wine he'd had at 5:00 in the morning in our dorm at the reunion? Like, we're adults. This is so strange.
I think part of it is that the reunion experience throws you back to a moment in time where you embody your younger self. You fall into old habits and maybe you forget that you can’t process alcohol the way you used to. But it just made me think of the insidious, weird drinking culture that I'd never really interrogated as a student.
I had written the first draft of my book and there was a lot of drinking and beer pong. And as I reviewed the book and kept working on it, I was like “This just feels really not funny.” And there's stuff underneath here. After reading your book and talking to a friend of mine who is in recovery, I just was like, actually, I think this should be something that's explored. So one of the main characters is sober. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but I was thinking, what does it mean if you were a bro who was part of bro drinking culture, who then goes back to reunion sober and all of those bro friends still want to get blitzed? How does that change the way that you're experiencing this environment and what drinking triggers might be around you and who do you want to spend time with instead?
It's not a main plot point, but I tried to make it clear that everyone in the book is going through their own journey alongside Charlotte's, even though she's very self involved and maybe not aware of that. When you go back to reunion and you're reconnecting with all these people, of course there's going to be someone who's in recovery and someone who is engaged, and someone who is moving back home with their family.
I loved seeing your exploration of it. So much of our generation’s relationship with party culture starts on college campuses, and it's such an astute observation that when we go back for these big reunion weekends, we feel like we are being transported back in time. I was not sober at my five year reunion and I very much embodied the spirit of my younger self in the body of an older me who was getting brutal hangovers. It was the beginning of the end of my drinking career; I got sober four months later. So I think that was such a smart thread to weave into this book.
Your book got me thinking. As I was revising my book, I was like, “It's actually kind of a problem that these people are drinking in every single scene. I don't really know if I like that.” So thank you for partially inspiring it!
Ella’s book is now available wherever books are sold!
For more on Ella —
But How Are You, Really
@BrosandProse
“Why I Love Telling People I Have Herpes” (Women’s Health, 2015)