Q & A with Jim Wellman

1. When do you like to write (time of day, day of week)? Where do you do your writing (location)?

Except for things I write as part of my day job, I prefer writing on Sundays. For some reason, I seem to be able to detach myself from the rest of the world better on Sundays, especially early Sunday mornings. Other than Sundays, any late, late night when I think the rest of the world is asleep. I write from my home office.

2. What was your first piece in print (book, review, or article, etc)?

A magazine editorial called “Send in the Clowns—Don’t Bother, They’re Here.”  It was a rant about seal hunt protestors. I stole the title from the name of a popular song a couple of decades ago. The editorial clearly pointed out my disgust for the likes of movie stars, dancers, and singers, etc. coming here from Hollywood or Toronto, preaching to us ’bout something they are totally ignorant about. The charades continue and, sadly, they’re making a lot of progress.

3. What other jobs have you had besides being a writer?

I’m still working full time as managing editor of a magazine called the Navigator. It’s a fisheries magazine based in Newfoundland and circulated throughout all of Atlantic Canada meaning I have to spend a lot of time in the Maritimes. I spent thirty plus years in the radio business as a broadcaster—first in private radio (VOCM network) and then twenty-nine years with CBC, first in Grand Falls and then St. John’s.

4. What do you like to do in your free time?

I have very little free time. But I do enjoy cooking. While I have an awful lot to learn, I enjoy experimenting with food preparation. Cooking dinner is never a chore. Give me a glass of red wine along with my music on the player and I can cook for hours and not be aware of anything else in the world. When I’m on my treadmill on the weekends, I watch the cooking channels on TV, looking for tips and new ideas. Besides cooking, music is very important to me. I have a fairly large music collection—about 50,000 titles and growing. I have just about every genre except rap.

5. What is your favourite food?

A tough question actually. I’m rather partial to anything fish—a good thing too I suppose, considering I work in the world of fish. I like the flexibility of white-flesh fish because there are endless things you can add to it and it always comes up tasting wonderful—well, almost always.

6. What is your favourite movie(s)?

I’m not a big movie buff, but I do enjoy a good movie now and then—more so lately than in recent years actually. My son gave me a movie called Once for Christmas. I really enjoyed that. It was one of those low-budget little pictures that just clicked in all the right places. Santa also brought me Capote and I really enjoyed that.

7. What is your favourite book(s)?

After working eight or nine hours most days and then cooking dinner, I have little time left to read books. I read a lot of magazines and current affairs stuff. Most of the books I’ve read in recent years are by Newfoundland writers. I especially like Maura Hanrahan’s books. Maura knows and understands the people in this province’s coastal communities, especially in Labrador, as well as, or better than, any other writer I know. I grew up in the “bay,” the son of a schooner captain and I worked one year on the Labrador coast many years ago, and not many “townies” really can get inside the psyche of coastal people but Maura does.

8. What character from a book is the most like you? What one would you most like to be?

I don’t have an answer to either of those questions because I’m sure too many people would (as I would myself) wonder “who the hell does he think he is?” But it would be some old sea salt, a little rough around the edges but firmly set on a course that’s noble at the end of the voyage.

9. What city/country would you most like to visit and why?

Hmmmnnnn . . . not sure. I’ve been in Asia but don’t have any great desire to go back. I have visited three or four countries in Europe but really want to see more, especially the Austria, Switzerland, and Germany regions. These are countries of great beauty, of course, but there is such an incredible history there too—a large variety of historical places where some of the world’s greatest music composers, artists, architects, educators, engineers, and you name it, lived— people who had huge influence everywhere in the world that still lasts today.

I would also like to go to Australia. I’ve met a lot of Aussies and we get along famously. They’re a lot like Newfoundlanders.

10. Make a question of your own and then answer it.

Are there other books in your future? If so, will they be marine related as all five of your current books are?

I suspect the series we call Final Voyages will continue as long as I can write. I’ve written more than a hundred of those marine incidents so far, but the Atlantic provinces’ marine heritage is such that I’ve only scratched the surface of the tragic stories of people lost at sea in fishing vessels.

Other than that I would like to write at least one book about the wonderful people that I’ve been blessed to have known working with fishermen and people of the sea. They are by far the greatest people on earth and are certainly among the funniest. Besides the tragedies I’ve chronicled, I would love to write about another side of our people. It would be about how steadfast they are in dealing with harsh living and working conditions and especially how they see a lighter side in almost every event that touches their lives, even in death sometimes. I’ve heard so many funny yarns that could only be true in Newfoundland because of our unique sense of humour.