Interview with Ellis Jamieson: Issue 6 Featured Contributor

"The humans call her name – the mourning cry that changelings’ parents always sing. The forest steals their echo."

—Ellis Jamieson, "Changeling"

With their whimsical storytelling and ephemeral language, Ellis Jamieson is our prose featured contributor for Issue 6: Flare! Read their short story "Changeling" here. In this interview, Jamieson dives into the cultural and personal inspirations behind their piece, their fluid writing process, why reading isn't necessary to be a good writer, and much more. "We are formed by the stories we tell," Jamieson says; indeed, we hope you find inspiration from their words and philosophy to tell your own.

How would you describe your writing style and process? 

For me, the process of writing is never an exact art. I don’t have rules for it, preferring to trial different ways to gather ideas and get into the writing zone. Next month, I’m staying at the Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Retreat and spending a full week working on my writing, but sometimes I prefer to have five minute snippets here and there because the shortness of time increases the urgency to get words down. Sometimes I’ll write by my bedroom window where no one can find me and sometimes I’ll write in the middle of a busy coffee shop or out in the forest. Usually, I find that no place or method works twice in a row. Sometimes I start with an idea, and sometimes I let words tumble out onto a page and see what happens. I usually have to tear it apart again after I’ve written it and put it back together in a completely different way, but sometimes it can almost feel like it’s been 3D printed from my brain. Those cases are very rare. 

I will always ask my wife and my friends for feedback. They’re good at catching things I’ve missed and helping me work out kinks, and I’m not afraid to bin work I don’t like or isn’t working. I find freedom in knowing that it doesn’t matter and I can get rid of it, and if it was worth remembering, I’ll remember it. In short, the process is never the same twice and, for me, there isn’t a right way to do it. 

Similarly the style of my writing is changeable. It depends very much on what I’m working on. Sometimes I lean more towards the poetically abstract, while other times I am concise and blunt. Often, it’s a mixture. Overall, I’d like to think that my writing style is honest – if not directly, then somewhere below the surface. 

What inspired you to write “Changeling”? 

I am a neurodivergent writer. I know that, in many ways, most people grow up feeling different from their peers. For me, I found relating to my peers very difficult. I often thought I was some sort of mythical creature or would play pretend that I was to make sense of the distance I was feeling. 

Historically in Celtic culture, when children were different, they might have been thought to be Changelings – fairies disguised as a human child, while the real (proper, good) child had been stolen away. This idea resonated with me and I asked myself What if that were true? I wondered why a changeling would choose to stay in a world where it didn’t fit and no one really wanted it, and I realised that it probably wouldn’t. 

I suppose then, what inspired me to write Changeling was reflecting on having found space in my life where I feel like I fit, and the journey of getting there – the abandonment of expectations and discarding of unhelpful rules and the caring selfishness that I needed to learn to prioritise myself. 

What is your favorite scene or moment in this story and why? 

My favourite moment is hard to pin down. My instinct is to say the beginning – the statement She never belonged with you. That came from a place of defiance for my own past, and from this present version of me standing up for the child that I was then. The world is not built for children who are different and, to be honest, it doesn’t deserve them.

That then runs through to when, in the last paragraph, though the parent’s try to call her back, she doesn’t even seem to hear them. To me, they’re representative, not just of parents, but of society in general. All their panic and attempts to make her normal are for nothing because she can’t change. It’s not even that they’ve driven her away because she was never really theirs to begin with. They are a different species. She’s just recognising it and taking back her power.

Somewhat paradoxically, the narrator of “Changeling” finds home in the lack thereof—in the many, moving intersections between worlds. What does home mean to you?

Humans have a way of simplifying things. This can be helpful, but I think neurodivergent people often feel the complexities of the world more. The neurotypical standard for a home is four walls and a roof, but when you said “finds home in the lack thereof”, I was confused. My idea of home has very little to do with place. I find home by the warmth of the fire, or when the rain comes thumping down and runs its cold fingers through my hair. I find it in the views I see from the top of hills and when I peek under the caps of mushrooms. I find it in hugs and in the quiet when we listen to each other and in the differences we don’t have to be afraid to show. In Changeling, from the start she is home because, without ever saying a word, she is actually understood and she is wanted. That’s what home means for me.

What overarching emotions and thoughts do you wish to evoke in readers’ minds? 

Acceptance, self love, understanding and, to be honest, guilt. We are all guilty of trying to make other people fit into the ideas we have for them and closing ourselves off against the bits that don’t fit. It’s hard to really look at each other and see everything – I don’t think we can. When we take neurodivergence and other disabilities or differences into account (race, gender etc) understanding the perspective of a group we don’t identify with becomes even more of an impossibility, but we should still always try and be open to it. For example, I will never fully understand the experiences of people of colour, but it’s my responsibility to keep trying so that my actions or inaction doesn’t harm them. Writing, and the careful construction of language, is one of the ways I can attempt to communicate with people I know will never fully understand me. A neurotypical person will never know what it’s like to have a neurodiverse brain, but in Changeling, I can at least translate a little part of my experience even if it’s in an abstract way. 

I heard somewhere that guilt and shame, though they feel similar, are not. Shame is the end of a road, but guilt is positive because it leaves room for and encourages change. I wanted to evoke the feeling of guilt for a system that does not accommodate people like me so that, in some small way, something might change. 

What plans do you have for the future regarding writing? 

My plans for writing are fluid. I tend to work to short term goals rather than have any great aspirations for my work, though of course, what writer doesn’t dream of being a best-selling published author with an amazing book deal? For now though, I’m keeping it simple. My New Year's resolution was to send my work out fifty times this year (which works out at roughly four times a month) and see where that gets me.

I would love to have the capacity to do this full-time, but I don’t actually think that would suit me. I work best in short bursts of projects that I can use to distract me from the demands of other projects. I have a running joke with my wife that the best way to become a writer is to spend your time avoiding doing something else – like taxes or cleaning.  I do have lots of projects on the go at once – a novel, several short stories and a couple of plays. If they went anywhere, it would be amazing, but if not, the creation was the best part anyway.

Anything else you would like to add about your writing? 

I do not read – not in the way that writers always tell you to. For one reason or another, I find it difficult and, unless it’s a short story or something that sinks its teeth into one of my special interests, I won’t put myself through the discomfort. 

The notion that to be a writer, you have to read, in my opinion, comes from an ableist world that doesn’t account for the people that live in it – in this case, the dyslexic thinkers, or the partially sighted or blind, or even those who are just not confident.

More important to me is to engage with the psychology of the world and with the stories that we tell ourselves to make sense of how the world is and was and might be. Imagine, observe, and think What if. This could be through reading, but it could also be through audiobooks, art, podcasts, history, TV, or even just chatting with friends. Humans are made of ideas. We are formed by the stories we tell. So for me and my writing, reading is not as important as actually critically engaging and really feeling the stories around me. 

I used to take the old advice of “To be a writer you need to read read read” very seriously and think that meant I couldn’t be a writer. As it turns out, I can.