BCC Shines A Light on: Jen McConnell
BCC Shines a Light On:
Jen McConnell
Name of the piece published by BCC:
When/where was it originally published:
Clockhouse Literary Journal, 2011, and in my first short story collection, Welcome, Anybody.
What is the background of the piece? What led you to write it? What’s your process?
My stories almost always start with an image or a phrase. This piece started, sometime around 2002, with a sound. Specifically the sound of wet laundry hitting the metal cylinder of the dryer—that “thwack” sound. It’s not a pleasant sound and I thought about what could make it worse. Somehow I thought about a frog jumping into a washing machine and the little feet sticking to the metal. So that sound lived in my head for a while, along with the memory of a specific laundromat in San Francisco that I had seen (but not done laundry at) in the Polk Gulch neighborhood. I don’t really remember writing the story, since it was 20 years ago now! But I do remember the story was an anomaly. At the time, my stories averaged around 1,600 words, and this one clocks in at a breezy 380. I’m writing shorter stories now and flash, but not so much back then.
How did you feel when it was first published and how have your thoughts or feelings on the piece changed from then to now?
I love this little piece now as much as I did then. I usually don’t go back and read old stories for fear I won’t like it and/or it will seem juvenile compared to my writing now. But when I re-read it to submit to Bulb Culture Collective, I was pleased that it held up a dozen years later, by which I mean, if I were to write it now, I wouldn’t change much.
Is there a specific message you'd like readers to take away from reading this piece?
If the reader laughs or smiles while reading this piece, that’d be enough for me.
Where can readers find more of your work?
At jenmcconnell.com and occasionally on Twitter and Instagram at @jentheauthor
