Jan Carson on receiving feedback and managing rejection

Offering insight into various creative processes and advice towards aspiring and emerging writers, here’s a quick-fire interview with short story writer and novelist Jan Carson.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses will be published by Doubleday in April 2024.

Aisling: Quickly, While They Still Have Horses, published in April 2024, will be your eighth book. How do you maintain motivation and self-confidence, and most importantly hope, when you’re working on a longer project such as a novel or a collection of short stories.

Jan: The motivation part of working on a novel has never been a huge issue for me. I tend to get lost in the world of the book I’m working on and everything else in life feels like it’s conspiring to drag me away from that world. I write novels quite quickly — usually they take about three months. Then I spend months and months in the edit. During the three creative months I’m pretty antisocial. All I want to do is write. If I can, I’ll get away from home and take residencies or find other places to work where I won’t be distracted by normal life. Time is always the biggest constraint to my creativity. It’s a juggling act trying to balance writing with all the admin and promotional responsibilities which accompany publishing. A short story collection is a slightly different beast. The stories tend to be written over a number of years and I’ll keep building up the collection until it feels substantial enough to form a book. In an odd way, collections always feel like they’ve crept up on me.

Aisling: How do you move onto your next project once you have finished the previous? Is there a transition, mentally and emotionally? 

Jan: The next book nearly always launches itself into my brain space about 40,000 words into the book I’m currently working on. This usually happens at a tricky part in the manuscript when I’m questioning the worth of the project and easily distracted by bright, shiny new ideas. Over the years I’ve slowly learnt the difference between a book that’s being written on the page and a book that’s being written in my head. I need to spend a good year mulling over ideas, researching and developing characters before I commit anything to the page. I’m usually beginning to do this as I finish up the last book and will definitely be intentionally thinking about the next project as I work on editing. When I finish a first draft of a book, I try to put a bit of a time buffer between the manuscript and myself before I begin working on the edits. A month or so is usually enough to begin to forget the details of a book so you can return to it with fresh eyes, assessing it as a reader rather than a writer. This distance is absolutely crucial if you want to make bold editorial decisions and view the book objectively.

Aisling: How do you recognise when a piece of writing is finished?

Jan: A piece of writing never feels finished. I’m often standing at the front of a reading, adjusting, tweaking and editing as I read from a ‘so-called finished’, published book. This doesn’t really bother me. Art’s a lively thing. It tends to morph and evolve according to the context. Even if the text on the page is fixed it can read like a completely different piece of work according to circumstances. I remember reading a short story called Children’s Children from my first collection in Belfast on the afternoon of the Brexit results and, what had previously felt like a whimsical story about cultural differences and division, suddenly felt incredibly sad and prescient.

Aisling: There comes that magical point when the work created in private is published and made public. I’m curious what your experience of that has been like. Does it affect going back into the private space where you can create?

Jan: I don’t really dwell on reviews or critiques of my work. By the time the book is published it’s too late to take on board any useful critique about this particular piece of work. It’s very easy to become obsessed, both in a positive and negative sense, with how a bunch of strangers view your work. I’m much more interested in listening to feedback from the writing community; friends and colleagues who understand what I’m trying to do with my writing and hopefully have my best interests at heart. I also find academics’ responses to my writing increasingly useful. Often when you’re working on a story, (especially those stories which rely heavily on metaphor and allegory, as mine often do), you’re following the character’s journey and not overly fixated on what the story means or how it resonates with the contemporary world. Academics have an amazing knack of drawing the meaning out of stories and oftentimes making me sound more crafty and intelligent than I am. They’ve made me think a lot about the layers at work in every story though I try not to be too self-aware when I’m writing. If you write with the intention of being relevant and insightful you can unintentionally make your characters little more than mechanisms for advancing the plot.

Aisling: When you look back over your body of work, do you have an overall assessment of it? Are there themes and preoccupations that emerge and speak to each other?

Jan: Absolutely. In terms of the geography of my work there’s a real fixation on the North and particularly the parts of and communities within the North which I’m most familiar with. This is such a complex and constantly evolving part of the world I can’t imagine ever running out of material or interest in writing about the place that I call home. I consistently use magical realism as a vehicle to explore the issues associated with the North and I’m not yet bored doing this, so I’ll probably keep chugging on until it starts to feel stale. I’m a big believer in keeping yourself on your toes artistically: always learning, always challenging yourself, remaining curious throughout your career. After twenty years of writing, I can also see bigger themes emerging from the work such as family, faith, disappointment, legacy issues. Again, there’s a whole lifetime’s worth of writing in each of these areas so I’m unlikely to run out of material for quite some while.

Aisling: Most writers go through three phases: early, middle, and late. Where would you say you’re at and how would you identify the difference in yourself as a writer? Do you envisage how you can develop your writing as well as your writing practice?

Jan: I’ve probably arrived in the middle part of my career. On my better days I feel like I sort of know what I’m doing. I’ve been writing for twenty years now. I understand the rhythms of writing and publishing a book: the points at which I’ll feel most insecure and the points where I’ll feel like I can coast for a while. I have a better notion of how the industry works. I’ve built up a wonderful community of support not just with fellow writers but also with booksellers, publishing professionals, journalists, festivals and, of course, readers. I’ve also come to realise that the publishing industry is an industry and there are parts of being a writer and publishing books which feel so far removed from the creative process as to be quite soul destroying. Mostly, I’ve begun to really understand the importance of remaining curious: reading, thinking, talking to interesting people, constantly challenging myself creatively so I don’t fall into a writing rut. In the last few years, I’ve written my first full length stage play, I’ve written copy for a major museum exhibit and edited my first anthology. All of these experiences have been both challenging and really helpful in terms of expanding my creative practice. I’m currently on the look out for new ways to scare myself artistically.

Aisling: I think with being a writer, it’s kind of like being in a war with time management. Has your writing process changed over the years and how does that relate to your overall writing practice?

Jan: Yes, and I absolutely hate how my practice has changed, but there’s very little I can do about it. I often say to my students, enjoy the period before you acquire your first big publication as this is the most free you’re ever going to be both in terms of what you write and how you manage your time. Because I now travel so much, I’ve had to amend my practice from writing for a few hours every day to taking large chunks of time out of my life to go away and write. It doesn’t feel as balanced a way to live but it’s the best I can manage right now. I will say though, that my biggest epiphany of the last few years has been recognising and maintaining a healthy reading/writing balance. I’ve learnt the hard way that I need to spend roughly twice as much time reading as writing if I want to keep my head alert and engaged. The good thing about traveling is it gives me lots and lots of time to read.

Aisling: How do you manage rejection in the industry?

Jan: Honestly, not very well. It usually knocks my confidence for a good while. I’m lucky to have some great writer friends who do an amazing job of piecing me back together when I feel wobbly. I’ve also found that there’s no antidote to rejection like absolutely immersing yourself in writing something new and reminding yourself that it’s the process you find life giving rather than any of the trappings of success. I think as artists we need to be incredibly careful that the industry which monetizes what we create doesn’t get to define the worth of our writing. Even on the hardest writing days, my favourite thing about being a writer is still sitting at my desk stringing words together and making up stories. Rejection can feel like a temporary kick in the teeth but it can never take this feeling away from me. 

Aisling: Can you give any advice to writers who are submitting their work?

Jan: Don’t get too emotionally bound up in success or rejection. Some places will like your stories and offer you publication. Some won’t. Most will have so many submissions that they may really love what you’ve written and yet have no room for it. Try not to take this to heart. On a practical level, give your submissions strong, memorable titles so a first reader is intrigued. Keep a track of where you’ve submitted pieces and where you’ve been published so you know where all your work is situated. If you’re given feedback, consider it carefully and take on board anything useful. It’s rare for a rejection to come with insightful feedback so the readers must have seen some potential in your work.