Jan Carson was a student who lived in Derryvolgie Hall where I Chaplained, back in the day. She had some ambition to be a writer. Boy has she fulfilled that ambition, as this biog shows:
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has a novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears and short story collection, Children’s Children, (Liberties Press), a micro-fiction collection, Postcard Stories (Emma Press) Postcard Stories 2 is forthcoming in July 2020. Her novel The Fire Starters was published by Doubleday in April 2019 and won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland in 2019. In 2018 she was the inaugural Translink/Irish Rail Roaming Writer in Residence on the Trains of Ireland.
I asked Jan how she was dealing with Coronavirus Times.
What were you working on before the lock down?
I’m always juggling a lot of different projects simultaneously. I was around halfway through writing a Young Adult novel. I was also editing both my second collection of Postcard Stories which is still set to be published by the Emma Press towards the end of July 2020 and my next novel for adults which will be published by Doubleday in April 2021. I was facilitating a series of fantastic community writing workshops for the Irish Writers Centre, working with older ladies in the Falls and Shankill Women’s Centres, running the QFT’s Dementia Friendly Cinema programme and traveling to book festivals around the world to promote the paperback release of The Fire Starters in Mid March.
At what stage did you start thinking about how it would impinge on your work?
My first international book festival event in Istanbul was cancelled towards the end of February and this began a slew of live events cancelling. In the course of a week I lost almost £10,000 of work. Most writers make virtually nothing from book sales. All our income comes from live events and as the Book Festival season begins late Spring and runs through to mid Autumn this has happened at the absolute worst time of the year for us. I also quickly realised that most of my community arts practice would be either difficult to run because of social distancing or almost impossible. The majority of my work is with older, vulnerable people who struggle to access the complex digital platforms necessary to deliver online classes and workshops.
What are the ways that this impacts your life as well as your work?
I’ll be very honest and say I’m quite a solitary person. If I wasn’t so stressed out about issues around income I’d be quite happy to see this as a very long writers’ retreat and get knuckled down into serious book editing and working on the next novel. The loss of income is the main issue for me and also the anxiety which comes from worrying about the older people I love working with in my community projects. I feel desperately distant from them at the minute and am struggling to find ways to support and connect with them. It’s also been really hard to draw strong but generous boundaries. I want to use my writing to help and encourage and be a positive distraction for people at the minute but I’ve been absolutely inundated by organisations, institutions and individuals asking me to create content for zero budget. It’s difficult to say no but with no income coming in, professionally my best use of time is to work on the next book which I might be able to make some money from when this is over. I also don’t want to appear mean-spirited or ungenerous but I do think those who are not from a freelance arts background should be aware of the great service artists are currently offering providing enormous amounts of uplifting, encouraging art for zero income often at the expense of their own personal practice.
What ways are you using the down time?
I don’t actually see this as downtime. I have no more free time than I had before and in some ways have less free time. I’m still maintaining my daily professional practice of writing, editing and reading to develop my craft. I’m currently working on some online solutions to keep maintaining my community arts practice. So far this has proven quite frustrating and incredibly time consuming, learning new platforms and finding ways to work around restrictions. On top of this I’ve taken on a role as Writer in Lockdown for Open Books (an organisation which supports isolated individuals through reading groups), and am creating weekly stories and discussion questions for these groups to work their way through online. I’m continuing with my practice of writing a daily Postcard Story to isolated elderly individuals and these are now being illustrated by children. If you want to see their fantastic artwork check out the Instagram page @JansPostcardStories It’s been really heartening to receive their artwork each day. It makes me feel like I am still connected to the outside world. Finally, I’ve continued with my #MyYearWithAgathaC project reading all 66 of Agatha Christie’s crime novels in order to celebrate her 100th anniversary. Prior to the pandemic I was writing short stories based on her work inside each book and hiding them for people to find. I’m now just posting the books to isolated individuals. If you want to read any of the stories you can find them online at my website www.jancarson.co.uk
How easy is it for you to create in these unfamiliar, maybe anxious times?
I’m still writing. Writing is both my means of earning a living and my way of processing life. In a very real sense, writing is keeping me sane these days. It just takes a lot longer to accomplish what I used to be able to accomplish much quicker. My focus is shot to pieces at the minute and I can only manage short bursts of creativity before I need to take a quick break.
What can we all do to help?
A couple of things. You can buy books, ideally from small independent book stores who are still able to sell online, (please, please support Dave and the team at No Alibis during what must be a really difficult period for him). You can also download books from your library as authors receive a small percentage cut of these royalties. Can I ask that if you can please champion books with recent publication dates? Most authors rely on the round of Book Festivals and live events to promote their books and make sales and obviously these have all gone out the window recently. Also, as mentioned above, I’d just ask people who work in salaried roles for institutions who are protecting their income, to think carefully before asking a freelance artist to do something pro bono at the minute. Artists are generally nice people. They want to help. They will find it very difficult to say no. I’d suggest asking for artists who’d like to volunteer for a project rather than approaching someone directly and if you can offer some money then please do. There is also a way to donate to the hardship fund for NI artists struggling through loss of income through a project called Bread and Butter Fund.
What plans have you for when we get out of this?
I’m meant to be in residency in Australia reading at festivals and delivering workshops for the month of August. I’m still cautiously hopeful this might happen. After that I hope to begin delivering my community projects and rounds of reading again as soon as possible.
Three books to read whilst you’re in lockdown.
I’m mostly recommending comfort reading for folks at the minute. At times like these you probably want a book you can lose yourself in and escape for a while. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d thoroughly recommend Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. You literally won’t be able to put it down. Can I also give a big shout out to a very recently published novel, Marianne Lee’s beautiful historical fiction account of the Bantry-based female botanist Ellen Hutchins. It’s a gentle, beautifully written, utterly captivating book which kept me rapt all last weekend. Just published last week by Irish independent press, New Island. Finally, a shout out to the humble short story. If you’re finding your concentration is a bit all over the place these days the short story might be the very thing for you. My favourite collection of the last few years is the utterly brilliant The Redemption of Galen Pike by Welsh writer, Carys Davies. Published by Salt, so you’d also be supporting another small indie publisher in buying this. I have a series of great blogs about good lockdown reads over on my website www.jancarson.co.uk if you’d like some more reading tips.