Sunday Whoever

Jane Houghton has been with the site for a long time now. Her work is always a delight and beautifully written. If you haven’t seen any of her stuff up to now just type her name into the search field and anything you choose will be a treat. her first piece – Walk on By will lead you to others in her catalogue.

1. How many friends and family ask how your writing is going?

A: These days, not many. My own doing. I find it hard to talk about my writing. I’m not sure why. I think that I’m scared that I will ‘jinx’ it if I talk about it. I’m a strange creature. If people do ask, then I either feign deafness or grunt and then change the subject. So most know not to go there now.

2. What in your opinion is the best line you’ve ever written.

A:The best line that I’ve ever written is…likely still to be written. Though I am partial to the following, which features in my most recent short story, ‘The Glorious Both/And’:

As bitter as Hazza after Charlie-boy has spent the entire evening blanking him and cosying up to his little Willy.

Not my most profound line, granted, not a deep-dive into the human psyche, but, my oh my, it did make me laugh out loud when it popped into my head and leaped onto the page; as can probably be inferred, I am not the biggest fan of the Royal Benefit Scroungers. Off with my head! Charlie-boy, I dare ya…

3. Would you write what you would consider shite for money?

A: My detractors might say that I do this already – but for free. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t, that I would never compromise my artistic integrity blah blah blah, but, if my house was about to be repossessed and it was a choice between selling my soul and selling my body, then the soul would have to go. Knickers firmly on and shite for money it would have to be.

4. Will you ever go Woke with your writing and use pronoun/non-descript characters and explore sensitive issues in an understanding and sensitive way?

A: In ‘The Glorious Both/And’, the protagonist is never named. I refer to her as ‘she’. But I wasn’t trying to be Woke. I am not THAT trendy. When writing, I felt as though I didn’t need to name the character; more than this, I felt as though I shouldn’t name her. I am not completely sure why, but I knew that I wanted to follow this intuition. I wanted the story to hint at things, point towards ideas and themes, as opposed to concretely stating them: it points towards a woman discovering that her sexuality is not as tightly delineated as she had always assumed, but this idea is never stated concretely. In this vein, then, it felt appropriate to not concretely name the protagonist. I wanted the spaces and silences between my words to say as much as the actual words. I likely fell arse over tit but this was the aim that revealed itself as I got further into the story…

5. Type something surprising.

A: FUCK!!!!!!!! However, given my colourful back catalogue, this is hardly surprising. More surprising is that ‘The Glorious Both/And’ contains only one swear word. One! And this is ‘bloody’. And we all know that bloody is not a real swear word. At most, it is half a swear word. Abstinence from the expletive almost fucking killed me.

6. Do you see something different in a mirror that others don’t when they look at you?

A: 50% of people see my Da when they look at me. The other 50% see my Ma. I see our old Milkman. I joke. Or do I…? Like most, I see only the flaws (that nose is too bent, those cheekbones are not chiselled enough, that mane is TOO FRIZZY, etc. ad infinitum.) and none of the good bits (that’s because there aren’t any, you ugly biatch…).

7. What would you like to like as you hate that you hate it?

A: Early mornings. I flippin’ loathe the buggers. They should come later in the day. Then I’d get on better with them. I’d love to be one of those floaty, New Age types that rises with the birds, necks a green smoothie and does yoga. On top of a mountain. Alas, I am not. This is not my dharma. And one must follow one’s dharma. Otherwise, the Dalai Lama has no choice but to intervene and put a curse on you, Voldemort-style. True story. MY dharma stipulates that bird-rising-hour is also Jane-bedtime-hour, which makes rousing myself for work a tad problematic. Two hours of sleep is not optimal, apparently. And caffeine has its limits. My cross to bear.

8. Has anything you have written told you something about yourself you did not know (good or bad)?

A: ‘The Girl with the Feet’ suggests that I might possess a vivid imagination. Who knew?!?! Vanilla types might feel inclined to use the word ‘sick’.

9. Do you have a work that has been repeatedly rejected that still means a lot to you?

A: When I finally womaned up and put pen to paper, my first writing attempt was a novel – I thought that I would start small, ease myself in…

I sent it to a lot of publishers. No one accepted it. Now, I see why. It was terrible. Overblown, overstated, full of repetition. But it represents my first writing voyage and my first attempt to undermine my chronic self-doubt when it comes to writing and ‘people like me’, and so it is still very dear to my heart – and, I think, always will be. In spite of its utter shitness.

10. What percentage of their time do Cats spend thinking of new ways to mess with you?

A: 124.73%. There or thereabouts. Cats hate me. They want to rip my head off and piss in its contents when I walk past them. No exceptions. For this reason, I hate cats. (Sorry, Leila!!!!) But, to be fair to myself, the cats started it.

***