GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022/23
An interview with GBP Short Story Prize author PJ Johnson
‘Clean’ is such a fantastic story, PJ – thank you for submitting it and congratulations on being longlisted for the GBP Short Story Prize. To get the ball rolling, can you tell our readers a bit more about what it’s about, how and when the idea first came to you, how you set about writing it?
Thanks so much! ‘Clean’ started life as a fairly different story - the skinlessness was still a major plot point, but the protagonist’s motivations for this skinlessness were a lot more literal. She just wanted to feel completely clean, rather than that her skin held so many reminders of trauma. Now, it’s about a woman, compelled to remove her skin, in order to free herself from the past. She is desperate to feel normal and to have her routine, but bins keep talking to her.
‘Clean’ was actually the first story in my dissertation collection - I graduated from UEA’s Prose Fiction MA in October - and I started writing it in July. I wanted to write a story about compulsions, and the whole collection was based around the bodily horrors of femininity. This was the story that summed up the collection most for me, although it was pretty horrible to write. I watched this video on YouTube almost every day about how humans could survive without skin. I think I wanted the writing to be more of a cathartic experience but I was kind of glad when it was over.
One of the main ‘characters’ is a bin, which makes me think of the notion of discarding / throwing away which runs through ‘Clean’. Can you say a bit more about that?
I think it’s less the act of throwing away, and more the act of repurposing that I wanted to write through the story. Discarding is a massive theme, don’t get me wrong, but it ultimately leads to reinvention. Melanie’s trauma is discarded, although not forgotten, when she removes her skin; her skin is then discarded into the bins, but not entirely, and another person grows from the scraps. It’s more about what you can’t throw away or remove. You could read the ending as Melanie’s final act of removal, but I wanted this to be left open to interpretation. Will she become a new voice from the bins, demanding the skin of other people? Will she disappear, and Melanie Two take over her life entirely, the perfectly clean version? Either way, she’s more recycled than thrown away, I think. I had a lot of fun writing the bins as a character - I don’t think I’ll ever look at dog waste bins the same again.
‘Clean’ is about bodily transformation – but unlike, say, a story like Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ – it ultimately feels like a liberating affair; your protagonist seems to be having a fine time as they run through the streets, skin bellowing like a cape. Would you agree with this interpretation – and is this sense (of triumph, or pleasure) important to you?
Liberation is definitely the word for it. In one of the early drafts, actually, I had a hard time getting the balance right between Melanie’s sense of freedom and her discomfort. She was far too miserable, initially. I wanted her to be a triumphant character, at least at first, and rewriting to make her pleasure a greater theme was a good decision, I think. If you take it literally, she’s just removed the weight of her past experiences, and she should feel amazing, and powerful, and beautiful. A lot of my short stories have self-pleasure as a theme as well - maybe I’m just trying to have the best time writing.
OK. Tell us a bit more about your writing in general. Do you have a routine, how long have you been writing, what are you working on at the moment?
I feel like whenever I talk about my writing routine I have the urge to apologise. I’m not a writer who writes every day (I definitely should, and want to) and I feel bad about that. It tends to brew for a while and then I’ll sit down for a whole day and write a story and then I’ll leave it until the next time. It’s absolutely a compulsion, just word vomit whenever I need the release. I’m currently working on editing everything I wrote last year - I’m writing my debut collection, and it’s taking forever, because my habits are annoying.
And other writers, too – tell us some favourites.
Currently: Elizabeth Strout, Mizuki Tsujimura, Mieko Kawakami. Always: Olga Tokarczuk, Sayaka Murata, Claire Louise Bennett.
What about other art forms: movies, TV, music, art… Is there anything you particularly enjoy – and anything or anyone you think we need to know about?
I’m a musician, which is probably the main reason I’m not writing as much fiction as I’d like at the moment. As a creative person, I’m just desperate to let everything out somehow - right now, music is the way that’s happening, but it’ll definitely swing back over to prose at some point. In terms of other art forms, I have been watching a lot of crap on TV, for better or for worse. I have long periods where I rewatch everything terrible to give my brain a break. Art is all subjective, of course, but I shouldn’t watch the Twilight franchise as much as I do. The best new film I’ve seen recently was probably The Banshees of Inisherin.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received? (And the worst?!)
This isn’t so much advice I received as something I learnt for myself, but I realised I didn’t need to take everything so seriously. I was really big on giving everything some kind of meaning, but it’s a lot more fun to just write stuff and let other people put the meanings there for you. I don’t think I’ve had any bad advice, but maybe I just ignored it.
Finally, you’re hosting a literary dinner party. Who’s invited (time travel can be involved), where is it, what’s to eat? ... What’s the high point of the evening?
I’d really love to go bowling and have really bad bowling alley pizza with Kafka. I reckon he’d be down for that.