Cynan Jones, "Reindeer"
It’s December 19. Cynan Jones, author of Cove, hears those sleigh bells jingling.
How would you describe your story?
CYNAN JONES: It’s deliberately sparse, deliberately inconclusive, deliberate in its shift as the self-contained, competent physical narrative is undone and doubt and questions of truth take over. Ultimately, it’s a story about stories.
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
CJ: August 2020. COVID lockdown in the UK. I put the month aside to draft four stories that had been on my mind for a while, and all of which had something at their centre that would require a publisher to take a leap. I gave each story one week in August to see how they fell on the page. This was one of them. I always had the Calendar in mind for it given its setting and topic and was very happy when it hit the mark for H&O.
Once that early draft was down, I went back over it every now and then, through ’21 and into ’22, in the main making small refinements, decisions.
The ‘August’ exercise differed from my usual writing process. Usually, (in an ideal world), I don’t start writing a story down until I can pretty much see it in my head. Or maybe see is too blunt a word. It’s more that I can inhabit the story, and be in it, to report it. Anyway! The endeavour in that August was to get text on the page and see how it felt, then draw the story properly from it.
What kind of research went into this story?
CJ: For once, I wasn’t working in a landscape I knew intimately. This story had that in common with another of the August pieces. Perhaps I was sort of ‘travelling,’ given the COVID lockdowns and ongoing choices I had to make to navigate the pandemic.
I didn’t want to be specific, as such, as to where the story takes place, but wanted the proto-North to feel convincing and for that I did some work on the species that would be present, (albeit much of that work didn’t find its way into the text). I also did a good deal of research on hunting bears, types of snow mobile, and—something I’ve had personal experience of in the past—head injuries!
What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?
CJ: The short story is an event, everything matters. There’s no room for digression, and that—when a writer gets it right—makes for an immersive, transporting experience that leaves a mark far more significant than the time you’ve spent to read it.
Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?
CJ: Read the books, the stories. That’s where the important stuff is.
If you want to learn more about my process, my approach, you could always check out my online short-story course run by Curtis Brown Creative.
What's the best gift you've ever been given?
CJ: I can’t answer that. A gift is specific to a moment. My kid gives me the simplest things all the time and they knock backwards!
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