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Meanland Blog — Diane Simonelli

Diane Simonelli August 18

I am writing: solitude, noise and discovery

“The last thing a writer needs is the clamouring, 24/7 caffeinated babble-fest that now beckons so seductively from the glowing screen.” —Cate Kennedy, Overland 199

In February 2011, I discovered a rule many writers swear by. Allow me a move back in time to explain. My intention for this year was to write at least 20 hours per week while being the primary carer of my youngest son. No more night TV for me. In January, I began a nocturnal regime. Once my boys were in bed, I rushed to my year-old writing laptop, only to pace the floor as my husband’s fingers battled out on my keyboard until his Warcraft game’s bitter end. Soon an alternative emerged. At the back of my house is a small messy room with a big desk. The room, until February was hardly used. Now I bypass my slick black Dell as I make for my 11-inch, keys missing, broken internal mouse, coffee stained white Mac. Since the old laptop can’t keep up with Internet developments and the room is devoid of a phone line, Zadie Smith’s no. 7 rule – work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet – is a permanent state. I do not have to physically disable the Net portal as Franzen does before he writes. See rule no. 8. My windows are bare. The dark creates space. I hear myself think. For four months I’m pounding out short stories, essays, and novel chapters. Something has shifted. Where there was a block, are new possibilities. What do they say about the 10,000-hour apprenticeship required to master a skill? One dares to believe. A short story is published. An essay wins a comp. Deadlines loom.

‘A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.’

—Don DeLillo, Paris Review, The Art of Fiction, No.135

July. The heater’s on. I wear a coat. My feet freeze. School holidays. I walk a tightrope, children’s entertainment balancing on one hand, writing life on the other. The minute my boys sleep I am at my old laptop. I place iPhone within arm’s reach. Like many emerging writers, I am entering a writing competition. As the twelfth of July’s night deepens, I am thrashing it out with what Miles Franklin judge Morag Fraser calls ‘wash(es) of generality,’ a short story’s particulars beginning to emerge when, with a click and a drag of a thumb, I release a message I can’t ignore:

@DigiBook World 12.07.11 11.59 Ex-Pixar Designer creates astounding kids’ book on iPad. http://t.co/7ML4wdG

I rush from my back room dinosaur to the sports car black laptop, that incidentally, my husband has left to watch Tour de France. I’m on and downloading. It’s an app. For iPad. Developed and published by Rovio Mobile, the puzzle video game Angry Birds can be used on a number of platforms. My scrabble companion, Zynga’s Words with Friends can be played on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and now, Facebook. Like kindle for PC they’re synced to my iPhone; and before Pulitzer Prizewinner Penelope Lively calls another reader of ebooks a ‘bloodless nerd,’ what’s coursing through this hybrid paper & ebook lover’s veins? Ah. Hot lava.

Why my excitement? My boys love DS, Wii, Angry Birds, Internet’s Poptropica. Any electric thing that moves really. From the trailer, Moonbot Studios’ The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore is text with movement, colour and sounds that respond to a finger’s swirl on screen. ‘Visually stunning,’ writes Bob Tedschi of New York Times. ‘A game-changing Ebook App’ says Wired’s Daniel Donahoo. Ben Machell from The Times UK goes so far as to report: ‘It’s not inconceivable that, at some point in the future, a short children’s story called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore will be regarded as one of the most influential titles of the early 21st century.’

You can doodle on a blank screen, drag together pieces of a jigsaw, read or have it read to you. Best of all for a mother who wants to instil a passion for story in her children, it shows books – the old fashioned paper type – as magical beauties that move and heal. Damn the application. I’ve downloaded it for $5.99. Of 20 iTunes apps, it’s the one solely for iPad. I sync my iPhone to the laptop in case I can circumnavigate what look like rules. The app remains, a round-cornered square that will not budge on a screen. I envisage walking into an Apple store.

There’s a gorgeous, massive space in the Doncaster Shopping Town, the colours of silver and white, as if the future is here. Stuff my creative arc and chipping away at what could be an all right short story if I take just enough out and pack sufficient grace in. I think about forking out for an iPad when I promised myself I would wait for Christmas. I talk to myself about patience. I may have lost my fight to write tonight. Tomorrow, story and me will start afresh.

It is now two-thirty. The ride continues along winding tracks through the hills of France, taking my husband with it. In late night viewing, I am not alone.

I pick up my iPhone. Sit on the couch next to him. Click on the trailer. ‘Look at this,’ I say, eyes gorging on a small boy kicking at nothing, his suit the colour of autumn, a paper leaf circling a musical wind that is replaced by the close-up of a piano whose keys sound red at a touch. Blue sprays across a sky with the brush of a finger. Ivory pages, others yellowing and thick, are turning. Nostalgic charcoal font swells before rushing from the screen’s sides to its deep centre, pulling me in. I imagine my sons’ joy when they read/watch/hear/touch this. It’s 2.45. I wander back to my white dinosaur laptop. Look at my prose. In the grey light it is dull. Still. Forlorn.

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in a different time.”

—Rabindranath Tagore

I could blame twitter for my scattered state. I became a Tweep mid June. In the throes of early love, I can’t bear to be away for long. I understand that transitorily, it can send me off on seemingly wild goose chases. According to Franzen and Kennedy, it’s risky enough stepping into the real world, speaking face-to-face, picking up a phone and actually talking to someone. What if I want to be with real people, write and engage in social media? Shouldn’t I want to understand the digital age in which my children are growing up with and I am exhibiting work? Twitter fast forwards and repeats. It uses little to pack a punch. Through the micro-blogging service, I see Noni Hazlehurst read Go the F**k to Sleep, hear the Ship Song Project and discover more about bookstores in a day than I ever learnt from newspapers. Here are connections to writers, breaking news, literary mags and a sharper way to connect with friends. One part of me is afraid of being swept away. The other remembers a past PR role in London in which the woman who instigated the Disability Discrimination Act (my boss) ordered I read, watch and listen to all that was going on around me for three months before actively engaging. Something has to be said for immersing oneself in a new medium. One emerges out of its sea invigorated, somehow changed.
I understand that in weeks to come, I will learn to better balance twitter with writing and family life as I pour over media diets of established writers like Margaret Atwood and Brain Pickings Maria Popova. By following Meanland Founders Jeff Sparrow and Sophie Cunningham, I understand it can be done: a writer can engage audiences on all levels. What of Mr Morris Lessmore’s Flying Books? My family is yet to see the app in full. Come Saturday, we will make a trip to buy ‘real books’ in a store crammed with shelves stacked with spines. BTW, I did finish that short story, with greater imaginings than before.

 

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