An Interview with Jai Clare

Jai Clare’s new collection of short stories, The Cusp of Something, has just been released by Elastic Press, and with an impressive career of published works in the small press behind her already, it is sure to attract a lot of interest. Here, she talks about literary fiction, the short story, and what really gets her excited.

Can you start by telling me a little bit about yourself?

Ok, well I was born in South Africa but grew up in Worcestershire. Was a goth and was in a band—a very bad band!

So when did you start writing?

I was always a voracious reader at school; my art teacher, he asked me one day if I wrote. I said, “Well, like everyone, for school,” and he said, “No, everyone should write.” Well a few days later, after he’d shown me his film script, etc., I took him at his word and began writing lyrics/poems, and I thought that while they were bad—as most beginners’ work is—they had something different about them. They weren’t the run of the mill crap if you understand what I mean!

So that was the beginning for you?

It was; I was 17

Why short stories? What attracts you to the form?

Good question. I do also write novels—have an agent for them and everything and nearly got accepted a few years back, so it actually comes as a surprise to me to have a collection out before a novel. I thought with the current climate, I had no chance of ever getting a collection accepted.

I suppose I initially saw short fiction as a practice for writing longer works; of course this isn’t true. The short form is a challenge of its own, and you can say so much or so little through it that you can in no other form. I developed, I guess, a style suited to saying things lyrically, condensed, that the novel really struggles to allow.

A lot of your prose is very poetic; do you write much poetry?

No! Never, not anymore. I used to. In fact even had a chapbook of poetry published when I was 21, but after that, the poetic muse left me in that sense. I was a very limited poet, and when I started writing fiction and then allowed the poetic style to come through, I found my niche I think, and it suits me far better. I am a crap poet!

Just going back to something you said about “the current climate”—there is a lot of speculation that the short story is a dying art, is that something you would agree with?

Well there are plenty of practitioners, just not enough readers, which, considering we are supposed to have such short attention spans these days, I find surprising, but then you see loads reading Harry Potter on the tube….I think—I used to lecture on this subject when I was teaching at Falmouth—that it’s because the literary short story has become a less mainstream form thanks to modernism, and the mass of people find it hard to read as a form.

Why do you think that is?

Well, modernism turned the short story poetic—less plot based; novels could survive like this, but short fiction, which originated as a popular rather than elitist form, couldn’t survive this, and the average reader who enjoys a good literary novel finds the short form hard to digest, with no plot and characters you just get to know before you never see them again. And of course publishers don’t help. There are fewer and fewer markets for lit fiction in terms of what is available in Smiths etc., and so the form has assumed an elitist aspect, unless of course you are a well known name and people will read whatever you publish

Do you think short fiction has better success in the various genres than in literary fiction?

Success in terms of wider audience etc., yes, because genre readers seem to be more loyal. I don’t know if that is really true, it just seems so!

Your stories are filled with characters who are dissatisfied with elements of their own lives. Where does that come from? Is any of it autobiographical?

I don’t know really. I wonder, is anyone truly happy with their own life? I rarely if ever write autobiographically, though there is always a kernel of emotional truth to what I write because without that, for me, it would just be playacting, and not actually exploring anything powerful.

What inspires you, gets you really excited?

Golly! In a story sense, creating a puzzle out of images that mean something, that add up to something. Like at the minute I am working on a piece that began with a title and an image, then I worked some other images in and saw the connections between what was emerging, and those connections creating something meaningful is what excites me.

So what are you working on at the minute?

Well after some months of not working on anything due to moving etc., I am working on a short piece and hope to look again at a novel I finished last year to send it to my agent etc., before beginning a new novel, but I will always write short fiction. I can’t stop!

What is the novel about?

The completed one? Sex, the pressure to procreate, love, alienation, and ultimately hope!

Sounds fascinating.

Well… niche market again I am afraid

Well, best of luck with it, and thanks so much for taking the time today. Good luck with the collection.

My pleasure. Thank you!