#38 Jane Flett, writer

'I try to drag myself out to my actual desk, but the lure of duvets is generally too strong'

Jane Flett is a Scottish writer who lives in Berlin. Her debut novel, FREAKSLAW, is forthcoming from Doubleday (Penguin Random House) in June 2024, with a Berlin launch scheduled for July 5th. Jane's fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4 and featured in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and her poetry has been anthologised in the Best British Poetry. She received the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award, the New Orleans Writing Residency, and the Berlin Senate Stipend for non-German literature. She is also one-half of the riot-grrrl band Razor Cunts and a founder of Queer Stories Berlin.

Where do you write?
My favourite desk is at Obras residency in Portugal: a marble table beneath a tree, overlooking a pig farm and the castle on the hill. I’ve written multiple novels, short stories, and poems sitting there in the morning hours before the sun creeps over the house and it gets too hot to work, so I slink off to the pool. 

But unfortunately, I can’t spend all my days in paradise, so the other answer is in my bed, in Berlin. I try to drag myself out to my actual desk, but the lure of duvets is generally too strong.

What can we always find on your desk?
On my desk in Berlin: a chunk of pink marble from a Portuguese quarry, a decorative plate with Marilyn Monroe painted on it, a glass sand timer, various delicious smelling oils (ylang ylang, grapefruit, melisse, rosemary), pens that don’t work in a broken Spice Girls mug, a majestic succulent and a dying spiderplant, the metal casings of spent tealights, toast crumbs. 

On any other desk: a tarot deck, a laptop, and a cup of tea.

Morning writer or late-night words?
Morning, always. The older I get, the more obsessed I become with those hours before the Internet and the world seep in. 

Coffee, tea, nibbles?
Green tea, endless glasses of water (I am distressingly well hydrated), and tinned sardines on toast.

What’s your most tempting distraction?
Wikipedia. I can never resist that slippery hyperlink trail.

What’s that we hear on the speakers?
Nothing. I’m baffled by anyone who can listen to music with words and write at the same time; my brain is incapable of that kind of duality. There is, however, a wealth of music in my Freakslaw, including X Ray Spex, the Velvet Underground, Placebo, Aqua, and a selection of demented Scottish children’s songs from the Singing Kettle.

Have you got any pre-writing rituals?
I like to draw a tarot card every morning. If it suggests something wonderful is going to happen, I tell myself it’s talking about my day. If it suggests something terrible, it must be instruction for what I should do to my characters… 

Perfect bookshop to hide on a rainy day?
Berlin is blessed with bookshops. Another Country is an absolute treasure trove and the former host of legendary dinner parties (I miss Sophie Raphaeline all the time), Curious Fox stocks the most glorious selection of used and new books in their cosy basement, and She Said is a perfectly curated hotbed of cute queers to flirt with. 

What’s your most treasured book?
This answer is a cheat because I don’t have my hands on it yet—but in the post currently is a proof copy of my debut novel, Freakslaw, which is coming out with Penguin this June. It’s been such a long and complicated journey to get here, and I cannot wait to finally clutch it in my hands.

Favourite word in the English language?
Trouble. I like the way it feels in my mouth and I like cuties who cause it. 

Dream writing location?
A friend once posted a picture of an infinity pool in Indonesia with a stone desk built into the water, and I’ve fantasised about that ever since. When my books top the bestseller lists and I become very rich, I plan to build a swimming pool with a desk in it and do all my writing from then on with wet hands. 

Three writers (dead or alive) to have dinner with?
A chaotic queer dinner party with horny weirdos is the vibe I’m looking for. So, let’s say Cookie Mueller, Lou Sullivan, and Michelle Tea (preferably in her Black Wave era). I suspect there will be tarot, bitching, excessive quantities of wine, bisexual drama, and much talking over each other. It sounds glorious. 

One poem that has changed your life:
Kim Addonizio’s TO THE WOMAN CRYING UNCONTROLLABLY IN THE NEXT STALL is a poem I read and re-read a hundred times after a girl broke my heart. There’s a shift in the final line where she says, 'Listen I love you joy is coming’, and it gets me every time. When I was feeling extremely sad, I’d read this poem out loud to myself—a reminder that things wouldn’t feel this way forever. And they didn’t.