Jez Conolly

At Writing in Response to Art, one of my recent creative writing workshops in Aberdeen, Jez wrote a brilliantly investigative response to a Frank Auerbach painting. Listen to Jez read…

In Conversation

Jez and I met when he came to a couple of writing workshops in Foodstory in Aberdeen. Later, in Cult of Coffee, we discussed –– the transition from nonfiction to fiction, soup and Mexican food analogies, doing your own thing, how going with the flow makes things happen, friction between separate elements creating the new, receiving the shit sandwich of feedback, notebooks and pencils, the role of chance, being porous to the world, and deliberately creating discomfort in a reader.

I haven’t transcribed the laughter, but assume that it appears throughout.

* * *

Gayle: What do you find most exciting about writing?

Jez: I guess part of it is now having the opportunity to do it. I retired early last year and moved from Bristol to live in Aberdeen. I’ve written for quite a long time, but it’s been squeezed in when I had the physical and mental energy. I had a full time job as a librarian in Higher Education at University of Bristol, my post between 2015 and 2022 was as Head of Student Engagement, which was quite a senior high stress job. Prior to that post I worked in various different capacities in Library Services, and throughout that time, while I held writing aspirations, I often came home tired, and didn’t have… Well, I tell a lie, I made opportunities during the working day to do my writing, just don’t tell my line manager! Right now, being retired, it’s about having the opportunity to do what I want to do. Is that an answer to the question? I don’t think it quite is, that’s just practicalities.

Gayle: What about the actual writing then?

Jez: I wanted to transition from writing mostly nonfiction to fiction. I’ve had various articles, monographs and chapters in books published, which I’m still doing. But one of the things that happened during the lockdowns was that I rekindled my interest in short fiction. I specify short fiction, because I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew. I think it’s important to remain honest to the early stages of what you’re trying to do. I don’t feel I’m ready to do a big piece yet. So, I created the opportunity to write short fiction and made some connections early on, which led to some stories being taken up. That acted as a catalyst, and I built upon it. I’ve really enjoyed writing fiction, and a lot of it has been quite cathartic. It would be wrong to say that it’s life writing because it’s horror fiction –– what on earth kind of life does this guy have? –– but I’m working through thoughts or things that have happened to me to some extent, or loosely basing characters on people I’ve met. Don’t worry, you’re not in it. It’s felt good for where I am in my life right now. It’s initiated opportunities and I’m enjoying it very much.

Gayle: And how are you finding that transition from predominantly nonfiction writing to more fiction?

Jez: Beneficially, I’ve had things published in academic journals, but I should stress that I’ve never been an academic. Depending on who you ask among the academics I used to work with, I was either para-professional or support staff. I know how to adhere to the rigour, requirements and formalities of academic publishing, and I can do all that, but it didn’t particularly inspire me. In recent years I’ve taken opportunities to write lyrical nonfiction. And I’ve found a way with it. I’ve got a couple of things coming out this year and next year, one published by Bloomsbury, and one by Routledge. The chapters I’ve written for these books were journeys through my own past really, there was a spine of academic rigour to them, but I’ve latched on my own thoughts and feelings. This does seem to be one direction that some academic writing has taken in recent years, a slight shift at any rate, not in the area of medical or scientific papers, obviously, but certainly arts-based papers. It wasn’t my plan but I’ve very much enjoyed it. It’s segued quite naturally into writing actual fiction. They’re not incompatible.

Gayle: Did the way, or the method, you found with the nonfiction seep through into writing fiction, or was it the other way around, with the fiction bleeding into the non-fiction journey?

Jez: It was from nonfiction to fiction. But there was a period in 2020 when it was all a big soup. I was juggling various things and fortunate to be able to work from home, and I was developing a voice through both. I made a point of doing that. There were times when I’d been writing some fiction, then I’d go back to the nonfiction and there were bits I’d approach in the way I’d been approaching the fiction.

Gayle: I’m a big fan of the soup analogy. In my own writing I tend to think of it as how ideas form, as if there’s some kind of vegetable soup and in some magical process the blender reverses and the lumps –– ideas, people, incidents –– become apparent piece by piece.

Jez: Exactly right. Possibly with some croutons as well.

Gayle: Do you feel like you’re going in a more fiction direction now, or just happy with what comes?

Jez: It’s a sliding scale, but I’m about 75% or 85% fiction now. I’m not giving up the nonfiction. I’ve got a film review coming up on a website in a few weeks and an article coming out in a magazine in November. I’m going for things that aren’t academic, but it’s not fan stuff. It’s more quality genre-nonfiction.

Gayle: This leads onto the next question, about what’s the main thing you’re working on, or maybe it’s a number of things under an umbrella?

Jez: In the next couple of months I want to corral together some of the fiction I’ve been writing in the last couple of years. The stories tended to drip out through different publications but given that I hold the copyright, and the rise in respect for self-publication –– I’ve been involved in some other projects which are in effect self-publishing, which have been well-received ––that’s a direction I’d like to go in. One thing that does appeal to me, and I appreciate this might not be for everyone, but I don’t want editor or publisher interference. I’m quite long in the tooth now so I don’t need to do any of the tortuous publishing house process. I want to do my own thing.

Gayle: What a glorious position to be in. I don’t think I even want to go into the ‘writing to please’ arena.

Jez: I think there’s a David Bowie video my wife showed me some time ago, from the ‘90s, and he said never play to the gallery. If you’re doing something you really like, don’t assume someone else is going to like it. That’s a very good rule of thumb for me.

Gayle: Yes, though it’s not always easy to keep in mind, or stick to… I have invisible committees telling me what to do, what not to do, oh you can’t do that, who do you think you are, and all the rest of it.

Jez: I try not to let any of that get into my process, if I can help it, and given that I write horror fiction some of it is, well, as you can imagine, gruesome. I’d say a lot of what I write is probably at that gruesome end of the spectrum. Not everyone’s cup of tea by any means.

Gayle: And so your grouping of pieces…are you producing your own short story collection?

Jez: Yep. I’m aiming for about 25 stories, ranging from 10,000 words to 500-word micro fiction. A real mixed bag. Generally unified by how horrible it will be.

Gayle: Will it get more horrible as the book progresses?!

Jez: Not necessarily. It might take you by surprise, some stories are a little bit softer than others, some are appalling. I won’t even tell you.

Gayle: Well, I’ll look forward to reading it and being surprised.

Jez: Well, and sayonara.

Gayle: And have you started thinking about an arrangement?

Jez: Not yet. I’m aiming for something this time next year. Having said that, it’s not fixed in stone. If a bigger project comes up, I can park the short story collection. So, flexibility. There’s no timetable. You mentioned flow, and we’ve had an email conversation about this, and that’s very much what I’m doing. And there’s something about going with the flow that actually makes things happen.

Gayle: So you’re enjoying the openness of it.

Jez: Yes, and not to anticipate the question about how do I structure a piece, very rarely do I know how a story is going to resolve when I start writing it. That’s not to say I write through from the first sentence to the last. I tend to write in bits. To slightly misquote a Billy Connolly gag: my stories are like Mexican food, the ingredients are usually the same, but each meal is a different shape. It depends how you fold it.

Gayle: That relates to a quote I came across a couple of years ago, maybe Thoreau or Whitman, anyway I’ll badly paraphrase it as ‘find your bone and gnaw on it’, and that really helped me because I was thinking, I’m just always writing about the same thing. Is that ok? But actually, yeah.

Jez: It is. It really really is, because that’s your voice, it’s the shape of what it is you’re doing and to some extent it’s there for you to master and make your own. Be your thing. In Woody Allen movies–– I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about Woody Allen anymore, but he always played the same character and that was fine.

Gayle: And the result is always different, as you said, the Mexican food, the same ingredients but it always comes out differently, particularly if you’re not planning in advance.

Jez: Exactly.

Gayle: That was loosely the next question: how do you know when a piece of writing is going in the right direction?

Jez: (Laughs). I don’t know. But having said that, if I think about it, I’ve not had many failed attempts. I haven’t got too many fragments I’m not doing anything with. Sometimes I’ve written a fragment of a story and ended up putting it in another one, it’s a real jigsaw puzzle, which is one of the benefits of writing in a fragmentary way. Making it fit together, Frankenstein’s monster approach, which can be quite exciting. The friction of the things you wrote completely separately, and something new comes out of it. In terms of whether a piece is going in the right direction, I think I only know that beyond a certain point and I don’t know when that point will be. If something ends up being, say 5,500 words long I probably know by about 3,500 words that I’m going to nail it and I can see how I’ll make the whole thing work. But I’ve got several things that are about 1,000 words and they’re kicking around a little bit and I don’t know if I’ll definitely finish them but I probably know by the three-quarter mark how big the whole thing will be.

Gayle: But you sense something, and not to put words in your mouth, but the way you’re describing the process–– I had this just this morning with something I’m working on, the sudden feeling of the clicking together of the pieces in a sort of four-dimensional jigsaw.

Jez: Yep, definitely four dimensions. There are things you don’t plan but when you look at them together you find ways to make them work and it’s exciting.

Gayle: So, the friction between a few elements starts to create a new substance or connective tissue, or something similar, that gives you the sense of the whole, and from there you see the direction of the home straight…

Jez: Absolutely. When I start out, the original catalyst, the grit in the oyster, can be an overheard line of conversation. It can be as small as that to get something working in my mind, which might lead to a character sketch of the kind of person who might say something like that. Then I can build something around it. One thing I’m doing more of recently–– I’d like to write a mini-script, a one scene play, because I’m enjoying writing two-person dialogue, which I’d done none of before. I used to tell myself I’m terrible at dialogue, but increasingly I’m improving and really enjoying it. I’m working on a mother and daughter pair of characters; the daughter is late 50s, the mother is late 70s, early 80s. Having observed or overheard those sorts of interactions in real life, I’m thinking this is interesting and I’m taking mental notes, or sometimes actual notes. And that’s really grown, mushroomed almost, and I’ve written a good 2,000 words in the last two weeks from a standing start just from these two characters. Another thing I’ve tried to do to push myself a little bit, because a lot of male writers my age tend to write about male things and I’m not particularly interested in the male world… When I listen to people it’s usually women who say more interesting things, or they might imply things. Then I think, What are you really saying with those words, and ok, what would be the interesting response to that? I love that kind of thing.

Gayle: I just have one more question about how does your working on a new piece interact with sending things out, refusals, silence, and so on?

Jez: I’m not looking for feedback, which I’m sure sounds horrendously conceited. I’m kind of hoping for the complete opposite. If someone likes a piece or says something nice about it, and I’ve had a few people do that, that’s great, thanks. But I’m not looking for validation, I’m a bit too old for that. And I actually think it might cloud the issue.

Gayle: That the praise might send you in the wrong direction?

Jez: It’s a mild concern. I’ve been in a few writing groups in the past and only a few writing tutors will say, Don’t just say you liked it or it was good. That doesn’t help anybody.

Gayle: Yes, I find that mentioning what’s not quite working in a piece yet can be helpful. And also that not many people know how to give feedback that’s useful, so tend to err on the side of kind. Not everyone though.

Jez: Yes, there’s the shit sandwich approach, I’m sure you’re aware of that.

Gayle: Actually I’ve been delivered the shit without the sandwich, without the bread, just the filling, thanks very much.

Jez: Some people can take that.

Gayle: When I received it not that long ago I was mostly annoyed at how profusely I thanked him for the shit I was eating, and I thought, Why have I just done that?

Jez: What I would say about that is, if someone gives me shit, as long as they’ve at least understood what I was trying to do, then I respect what they give me. But if they demonstrate by their feedback that they’ve not understood, I’d say, Bye.

Gayle: And it was exactly that. A failure to understand what I was trying to do. And that’s the thing I find difficult about feedback: not everyone is looking at it in the context of what it’s trying to be, or what someone is trying to explore, it’s just their personal preferences…which are limited.

Jez: Agreed.

Gayle: So, the notebook…

Jez: I know the whole thing about a bad craftsman blames his tools, but going back to my lockdown experience when I was wanting to write more fiction, I wanted a system of recording my thoughts that was efficient and worked for me. I’m 57 now, and up until then I hadn’t settled on a mechanism. Then my wife found this really good art supplies shop in Melksham in the south-west where we were living, and they do these amazing journals. For the benefit of the tape they’re kind of A5, really chunky, leather bound. The paper is plain, I don’t like lined paper. And I have these pretend Japanese pencils, they look like regular pencils but they’re actually propelling pencils, with a nice thick graphite nib you can sharpen. I can’t tell you how important these notebooks are though, I’ve got 19 of them at home, they make a big difference in terms of working. I don’t know why, but they do. I remember reading about Muriel Spark and she always used the exact same notepad. She bought them in the same stationer in Edinburgh, and then they discontinued the line. But they were very helpful and managed to supply her with every last one in stock, because she couldn’t have continued to write if she hadn’t been using the same size and thickness of the paper. I know it’s a small thing, but it really works for me so I’m sticking with it.

Gayle: I’m also a little ritualistic about my materials too. Moleskine extra large cahier notebooks, lined. And Leuchturm coloured pencils. This is an HB. What’s yours?

Jez: That’s about a 6B.

Gayle: Ooh, do you not smudge, you’re not as messy as I am…

Jez: I’m not too bad, the main problem I have is rereading what I’ve written. But weirdly there have been occasions when I’ve not been able to read what I wrote and I’ve interpreted it differently and actually better.

Gayle: The happy accident. Do you take advantage of chance much in your writing?

Jez: I have to really, even in the area of ideas. I’ll just be going about my day and I’ll have a piece of work on the go and someone says something or I see something and I’ll think, Ooh I could use that. So, I’m constantly taking note of things that are happening around me. And I also stare into space an awful lot. I’m always doing it. There’s some indefinable level of porousness, of what you even are in the world, and it’s important to be that way to let things in. I think any writer exists to find something to do with all that stuff that’s going in.

Gayle: I was really smiling when you said the word ‘porousness’ and absolutely I get that. It’s that feeling of just soaking up whatever happens to come your way and then letting it marinate, percolate, whatever the analogy is, filter through and then you recombine.

Jez: Right. And all your senses, particularly if you’re doing some character work, like how they might interpret a smell, what that’s going to say about them. I love doing that and I love trying to create a three-dimensional world for these characters to be in and then move them around that space. For example, do people talk on the move, interacting with somebody else or maybe not looking at them when they’re speaking to them, and what that might mean. It’s a mixture of verbal and nonverbal communication that interests me. Characters have become much more important to me recently with the fiction.

Gayle: It’s interesting the way you describe that, people moving around the room and interacting or not interacting, and I’m thinking back to what you were saying about the script you’re developing, that sounds like quite a stage approach.

Jez: Yes, and films too. I like it when you have two characters sitting next to each other, like on a bus, or in a car, or in a waiting room, and how those people talk to each other, because they’re not facing each other but they’re communicating. And particularly if you’re in a social space but still trying to have a conversation that can’t be heard and discomfort comes in, and if one is more articulate than the other one… I really like exploring other people’s discomfort. And if I’m being completely honest, and please don’t judge me, I like creating discomfort in the reader. One of my favourite film makers is David Lynch and when I watch his movies I experience this sense of discomfort, almost wanting to giggle at times because, nooo, well, god, you can’t show that, or that’s embarrassing, and sometimes embarrassingly bad actually. He’s trying to create this sense of friction and discomfort and what happens as a result of that.

Gayle: I’m not judging you at all because discomfort is what I’m always trying to produce. Mostly in myself. The friction within the story, but also the friction of experiencing the story. Using language as a sort of surface that provides some resistance, some chewiness, some discomfort, rather than language as a pane of glass, for example.

Jez: I don’t know if they want it, or even know that they want it, but I think you’re doing some readers a favour by giving them a way in, showing something they maybe don’t want to look at, but they might just take something away from that. A lot of my stories don’t end in a neat way.

Gayle: Perhaps then, on that note of stories not necessarily ending neatly, shall we call it time?

Jez: I’ll just walk out now, shall I?

Gayle: You’re free to make your grand exit. Thank you!

To find out more about Jez’s work and process you can connect with him on:

email: jezconolly@hotmail.com

Facebook: facebook.com/jez.conolly

BlueSky: bsky.app/profile/jezconolly.bsky.social

His recent and upcoming publications can be found on:

World Film Locations volumes for Intellect:
www.intellectbooks.com/jez-conolly

Film monographs for Liverpool University Press:
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

Horror fiction featured in volumes of the BHF Book of Horror Stories series:
m.facebook.com/groups/747197896021189/

The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror:
www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Folk-Horror/Edgar-Johnson/p/book/9781032042831

Horrifying Children: hauntology and the legacy of children’s television:
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/horrifying-children-9781501390562/