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Jaime Gill is a queer, British-born writer happily exiled in Cambodia for the last decade. He lives alone in a small apartment overlooking the mighty Mekong, where he watches boats and people pass by and sometimes writes. He works as a consultant for non-profits across South East Asia, and occasionally leaves his apartment to run or train at his kickboxing gym. Jaime’s stories have appeared in Litro, The Phare, Fiction Attic, Good Life Review, Stanchion, The Tulsa Review, and more. He won the 2024 Honeybee Literature Prize for Short Story, Berlin Literary Review’s 2024 Best Flash Fiction award, and is a nominee for Best of The Net 2024. He’s also won or been a finalist for awards including New Writers 2024, the Bridport Prize, Flash405, Masters Review, and the Bath Short Story Award. He’s currently working on a novel, script, and far, far too many stories. More at www.jaimegill.com.
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Interview with Jaime Gill about his story
"Halfway Up a Broken-Down Ferris Wheel That's Too Damn Old, Just Like Me"
Honorable Mention for The Scribes Prize
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What inspired this piece?
On the most direct personal level I was once stuck up a ferris wheel with someone I liked very much and the experience must have been sitting in my memories waiting to be re-interpreted into fiction. On a more technical level, I wrote this during a phase where I was obsessed with the ‘first person direct address’ mode, where the main character narrates and addresses another. It creates a beautiful intimacy, and it was during my experiments with the form that I stumbled into the voice of this character, and the story almost wrote itself. I wanted to try and pull off the old John Irving trick to “cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts”, and hope this story managed some of that.
What draws you to the micro-fiction format?
I think all formats have their charms and challenges. As a reader, the delight of a really good micro is to feel like a whole world briefly opened up for you, like a small emotional explosion, or a beautiful vista glimpsed on a high speed train. As a writer, this is very challenging, and involves a level of precision in the editing process which can feel like brain surgery. But writers should always be challenging themselves, and there is a real joy in identifying a brief moment that is also a complete story, and rendering it at least semi-successfully.
Who are some authors that inspire you?
David Mitchell makes me want to give up writing forever and keep trying to be better, both at the same time. When I read “Ghostwritten” (his first book, before “Cloud Atlas” made him famous) I was bowled over by his linguistic brilliance, his gleeful genre-hopping, his humane intelligence, and the globe-trotting scope of his storytelling. I try and fail to write like him every time I open up my laptop. I also revere John Irving, Edith Wharton, Philip K Dick, early Clive Barker and the big Tolstoy doorstoppers, and have recently become infatuated with a new master of the short story form, Kate Folk. She’s dazzling. But I’m just as likely to be inspired by other art forms: Prince, David Lynch, Kate Bush, Pet Shop Boys, Pedro Almodovar, David Bowie, Bong Joon-Ho, and Lana Del Rey are rarely far from my thoughts. That’s not an exaggeration. I probably think of them all every week at the very least.
If you could continue writing your story after these 100 words, what would happen next?
I don’t know for sure, and I don’t think it’s my business to know. Whenever I write, no matter what length, I try to immerse myself fully in a character and their past and present. I need to know how they got to the moment of the story. But I don’t try and predict their future. If my character doesn’t know something at the time of the story, then I usually don’t know either, just as I never guess the futures of real people I know. Life is too unpredictable. In this particular case, I presume my narrator will do what he came to do, and release the ashes of his wife. And I guess he will live out the rest of his life still talking to her. I think that’s a habit he will be unable to break. But maybe I’m wrong? Maybe he’ll have a sudden surge of emotion and decide he can’t live without her and, as Morrissey once sang in happier times when he wasn’t a racist, “jump from the top of the parachutes”? I think the reader’s guess is as good as mine.
What's next on the horizon for you?
I have quite a few stories due to be published in the coming months, including one of my favourites, a 1950s gay romance called All The Things I’ve Never Done which should be out in Loft very soon, and a much darker modern tale called The Astronaut, which the wonderful BULL will publish. I’m also planning to start a new novel towards the end of the year, having written three execrable novels which will never be seen by another soul in my thirties. I’m also playing around with a few screenplays, though the novel will be my priority. And no doubt I’ll continue to write much shorter stories, I have a very long list of ideas and they can’t all be novels. You can find out what I’m up to at www.jaimegill.com.
What do you wish you'd known when you started writing?
That there is no such thing as divinely inspired genius. I used to have this idea that writers were almost mystical creatures, who were connected to some transcendental well of wisdom and intuition, and just poured their brilliance down onto a blank page, fingertips whirring in a trance-like state. This concept made me feel like a fraud every time I sat down and wrote something clumsy or flat out terrible. But the more I know other writers and collaborate with them, and the more I read very successful authors talking about their process, the more obvious it is to me that this is almost never the case. Everyone writes badly when they first sit down to try and capture a story. Sometimes they write so badly that there’s nothing to be done but forget that they ever tried. But sometimes there’s enough potential in that first draft to make it worth the painful and slow process of editing, editing, and editing again. Editing is where the magic happens. That’s not a terribly romantic concept, but it’s true. So write, write ugly, and then make it pretty. Or to paraphrase the punk rock icon Nick Lowe: “bash it out then tart it up later”.
Oh, one more thing. Don’t trust anyone who tells you that “show don’t tell” is an immutable law of writing. There are plenty of times when a bit of telling is much more efficient than laborious showing. “Show more than tell” is much better advice.
On the most direct personal level I was once stuck up a ferris wheel with someone I liked very much and the experience must have been sitting in my memories waiting to be re-interpreted into fiction. On a more technical level, I wrote this during a phase where I was obsessed with the ‘first person direct address’ mode, where the main character narrates and addresses another. It creates a beautiful intimacy, and it was during my experiments with the form that I stumbled into the voice of this character, and the story almost wrote itself. I wanted to try and pull off the old John Irving trick to “cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts”, and hope this story managed some of that.
What draws you to the micro-fiction format?
I think all formats have their charms and challenges. As a reader, the delight of a really good micro is to feel like a whole world briefly opened up for you, like a small emotional explosion, or a beautiful vista glimpsed on a high speed train. As a writer, this is very challenging, and involves a level of precision in the editing process which can feel like brain surgery. But writers should always be challenging themselves, and there is a real joy in identifying a brief moment that is also a complete story, and rendering it at least semi-successfully.
Who are some authors that inspire you?
David Mitchell makes me want to give up writing forever and keep trying to be better, both at the same time. When I read “Ghostwritten” (his first book, before “Cloud Atlas” made him famous) I was bowled over by his linguistic brilliance, his gleeful genre-hopping, his humane intelligence, and the globe-trotting scope of his storytelling. I try and fail to write like him every time I open up my laptop. I also revere John Irving, Edith Wharton, Philip K Dick, early Clive Barker and the big Tolstoy doorstoppers, and have recently become infatuated with a new master of the short story form, Kate Folk. She’s dazzling. But I’m just as likely to be inspired by other art forms: Prince, David Lynch, Kate Bush, Pet Shop Boys, Pedro Almodovar, David Bowie, Bong Joon-Ho, and Lana Del Rey are rarely far from my thoughts. That’s not an exaggeration. I probably think of them all every week at the very least.
If you could continue writing your story after these 100 words, what would happen next?
I don’t know for sure, and I don’t think it’s my business to know. Whenever I write, no matter what length, I try to immerse myself fully in a character and their past and present. I need to know how they got to the moment of the story. But I don’t try and predict their future. If my character doesn’t know something at the time of the story, then I usually don’t know either, just as I never guess the futures of real people I know. Life is too unpredictable. In this particular case, I presume my narrator will do what he came to do, and release the ashes of his wife. And I guess he will live out the rest of his life still talking to her. I think that’s a habit he will be unable to break. But maybe I’m wrong? Maybe he’ll have a sudden surge of emotion and decide he can’t live without her and, as Morrissey once sang in happier times when he wasn’t a racist, “jump from the top of the parachutes”? I think the reader’s guess is as good as mine.
What's next on the horizon for you?
I have quite a few stories due to be published in the coming months, including one of my favourites, a 1950s gay romance called All The Things I’ve Never Done which should be out in Loft very soon, and a much darker modern tale called The Astronaut, which the wonderful BULL will publish. I’m also planning to start a new novel towards the end of the year, having written three execrable novels which will never be seen by another soul in my thirties. I’m also playing around with a few screenplays, though the novel will be my priority. And no doubt I’ll continue to write much shorter stories, I have a very long list of ideas and they can’t all be novels. You can find out what I’m up to at www.jaimegill.com.
What do you wish you'd known when you started writing?
That there is no such thing as divinely inspired genius. I used to have this idea that writers were almost mystical creatures, who were connected to some transcendental well of wisdom and intuition, and just poured their brilliance down onto a blank page, fingertips whirring in a trance-like state. This concept made me feel like a fraud every time I sat down and wrote something clumsy or flat out terrible. But the more I know other writers and collaborate with them, and the more I read very successful authors talking about their process, the more obvious it is to me that this is almost never the case. Everyone writes badly when they first sit down to try and capture a story. Sometimes they write so badly that there’s nothing to be done but forget that they ever tried. But sometimes there’s enough potential in that first draft to make it worth the painful and slow process of editing, editing, and editing again. Editing is where the magic happens. That’s not a terribly romantic concept, but it’s true. So write, write ugly, and then make it pretty. Or to paraphrase the punk rock icon Nick Lowe: “bash it out then tart it up later”.
Oh, one more thing. Don’t trust anyone who tells you that “show don’t tell” is an immutable law of writing. There are plenty of times when a bit of telling is much more efficient than laborious showing. “Show more than tell” is much better advice.