Creative Differences and Other Stories

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  If not for money, then maybe for love.

  Three years ago, Emily was a struggling literary author when she met Scott, a struggling screenwriter. Combining her elegant writing with his gripping story, the pair crafted a novel that became an international bestseller—and fell in love along the way.

  Now her latest manuscript is stuck, his solo novel has flopped and their relationship is on the rocks. The situation is made even messier when an aspiring writer with her own agenda gets involved. Can Emily and Scott work it out and create another hit?

  Creative Differences is a wry and incisive study of love, writing and creativity from internationally bestselling author Graeme Simsion. It’s accompanied by a selection of stories from across his career, including the first appearance of Don Tillman from the Rosie novels.

  Contents

  Cover Page

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Introduction

  The Klara Project: Phase 1

  A Confession in Three Parts

  Three Encounters with the Physical

  The Perfect Gift

  Like It Was Yesterday

  The Life and Times of Greasy Joe

  Intervention on the No. 3 Tram

  Heartbreak Hotel

  Christmas Is Cooked

  CREATIVE DIFFERENCES

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Songwriter Sammy Cahn, asked which came first, the words or the music, famously replied, ‘The phone call.’ What struck me when I returned to the pieces collected here—and to the twenty or so others not included—is that, unlike my novels, they were all written in response to requests or opportunities. The first two began as class assignments, the next three were competition entries, and the more recent pieces arose from invitations to contribute to anthologies and magazines.

  I don’t think they are any the worse for being produced to order: necessity, constraints and deadlines are good friends of creativity. Indeed, without the external imperative, these stories would likely not have been written at all. I’d have missed the opportunity to experiment with different styles and, particularly, with characters who would eventually take their place in novels. Adam Sharp, Don Tillman and his unreliable mentor, Gene, all had their first outings in short stories.*

  The second surprise was being reminded of how much the stories were rooted in reality, with a greater or lesser dose of ‘what if?’: Two are, for all intents and purposes, memoir. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ gave me a chance to reflect on the experience of walking the Apennines in down-at-heel Liguria with my partner, Anne Buist, before we fictionalised it in Two Steps Onward. ‘Three Encounters with the Physical’ was prompted by a near-death experience which, temporarily at least, heightened my sense of the world around me, something my writing is inclined to neglect in favour of the internal and psychological.

  ‘Like It Was Yesterday’ began as an entry to the Age Short Story Award to follow ‘Three Encounters’, which had placed second. It was, as far as I could recall, an accurate history, burned into my memory as the title suggests. It’s a measure of how much I was disturbed by the events that, almost half a century later, my problem was that I was ‘too close’. But, as I put words to the story, I began to doubt its veracity.

  I left it a while, then added a fictional section in which the narrator’s recollections are shown to be false and self-serving. Sometime later, I re-established contact with one of my classmates from that era and showed him the story. He’d remembered too: our memories—and enduring sense of injustice—were identical.

  Memoirist Lee Kofman says, ‘Write what makes you blush.’ A profile by Maxine Beneba Clarke had called me ‘the very ordinary kid from the flatlining Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley’. I took it as a challenge to disinter and write about that part of my life, in something close to my nineteen-year-old voice, awkward and unflattering as both were. Most of the vignettes, including the final one, in ‘The Life and Times of Greasy Joe’ are true, though Joe is a composite. The Big Issue accepted the story but declined to use Ms Beneba Clarke’s description as my bio.

  The most successful appropriation from real life was for my first assignment as a mature-age writing student. It illustrates a lesson I would learn from screenwriting studies: an original story is good for an episode but an original character can be the foundation of a series.

  Years earlier, I’d booked dinner at a steakhouse in New York with a colleague and—knowing him well—had warned him to pack a jacket to comply with the dress code. He brought a hiking jacket and, on the night, regaled me with its qualities, none of which were likely to cut any ice at the restaurant. We missed out on the steak, but have both dined out on our versions of the evening’s events.

  With the addition of a few ‘what ifs’—a first date, an overenthusiastic security officer and a standardised meal system—I had a story. But it was the character, inspired by my dinner companion, and informed by a lifetime of working with academics and technologists, who was to give me The Rosie Project and two sequels. I’m sure that grounding in reality, rather than in clinical descriptions of autism, has been a big factor in the success of those books and their positive reception from the autism community. The ‘theory of mind’ test in the story breaks that rule; it was added after one of my writing classmates asked, ‘Does this guy have Asperger’s?’ I felt obliged to deal with the question, but had changed my mind by the time I included the scene in The Rosie Project.

  Reading ‘The Klara Project: Phase 1’ now, it’s apparent that Don Tillman’s voice came to me fully formed. Six years later, after a detour through innumerable screenplay drafts, in which Klara became Rosie and the plot I’d envisaged changed beyond recognition, Don was pretty much as he is here—and as he is a further six years down the track, in ‘Christmas Is Cooked’. I have mixed feelings about using his voice outside the novels, but in the face of world events and social dilemmas, I sometimes find myself asking, ‘What would Don do?’ So here he is, demonstrating that adage about the durability of characters.

  The final aspect of the collection I noticed, because I was looking for it, was the role of creativity. There’s a progression from the showy experimentation of the novice to a more controlled and less visible underpinning. ‘A Confession in Three Parts’, written just after the Don Tillman piece, uses multiple points of view, switches in tense and non-linear narrative with big time changes, all in 1400 words. Look at me!

  Five years later, in ‘Three Encounters with the Physical’, I was being more deliberately adventurous but the plumbing is, I hope, less obvious. I thought it would be interesting to write something that employed each of the three main tenses and three different points of view, starting with the most exotic combination: second-person future. You will. Those were the words I used to spur me on in an ill-fated marathon. The first draft followed my formalism exactly, but I didn’t feel bound by it, and the tenses in the final draft slip and slide more naturally.

  ‘The Perfect Gift’ is an example of creativity arising from restrictions. It had three incarnations, two of which are in this collection. The version that is not included was the first: a screenplay for the Toronto Urban Film Festival, sixty-second silent films shown in subway stations to, apparently, a million daily commuters. Limited time, no dialogue, and I felt it had to be set on a train. I remembered a colleague who’d leave his origami creations in public places, and a psychiatrist friend’s speculation about his motivation and the response of those who found them. Telling the story in a visual minute was a challenge, but not as great as getting the essenc
e into 140 characters for the Guardian Twitter Fiction series.

  The third version, ‘Intervention on the No. 3 Tram’, was commissioned by Yarra Trams for the Melbourne Writers Festival. The public-transport connection prompted me to revisit the story, replacing the train with a tram, and throwing in the psychiatrist and his projections. It’s all made up, except for the reference to a man collapsing in a lift and the psychiatrist saying, ‘I think it would be inappropriate to intervene.’

  Creative Differences, the novella that concludes this collection, has not been in print before. It came from a proposal by Audible Australia that I write an Audible Original audiobook, and employed a range of creative techniques that would make Edward de Bono proud.

  At the time, I was drafting my how-to book The Novel Project, where I discuss the relative merits of planning and ‘pantsing’—writing by the seat of one’s pants. The debate, which is very real in writing circles, seemed like a candidate for dramatisation, and I imagined a couple with different approaches working on a book together. Write what you know.

  The audio format suggested ‘radio play’ and ‘music’, which translated into a dialogue-driven style and a search for a musical work to inspire me—one that might mirror the four-part structure I discuss in The Novel Project. I landed on the idea of a four-sided double album, and chose the most iconic. So The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ became a reference point for structure and ideas: thirty tracks, four voices, and the creative differences that famously break up bands.

  As the closing passage acknowledges, when I was done, I let the scaffolding fall away. If you know the album well, you’ll find some remnants, but only if you’re looking. I won’t mind if you miss them. But the opening sentence exactly follows the metre of ‘Back in the USSR’.

  * Adam appears in ‘Savoir Faire’ and Gene in ‘Natural Selection’, both published in The Road Home, Stringybark Publishing, 2012. Don’s first appearance, in ‘The Klara Project: Phase 1’, is included in this collection.

  The Klara Project: Phase 1

  Incredible. Three major social errors in one day. Having reduced the average to 0.87 per week over the past year, I need to explain that the anomaly is entirely due to the Klara Project. Obviously the risk of mistakes is greater in unfamiliar domains. Also, all three incidents have actually contributed to a positive outcome—a major, higher-order positive outcome—but Gene is not prepared to overlook them on that basis.

  Error Number One was the Toppled King Incident. Without it, the Klara Project would not have been initiated. Prior to it, I barely knew Klara, except as a graduate student who often spoke to me after my quantum-mechanics lectures. I recalled her as a continuous identity because of a common thread in her questions, and did not connect her with the bespectacled young woman playing chess with Alexei in the tea-room.

  From a quick assessment of the chessboard, it was obvious that Klara was either totally outclassed or had made an early blunder. Either way, she had lost a rook early in the game, and the obvious thing to do was resign rather than play out the inevitable result. I simply drew attention to this obvious point by tipping her king over, a time-honoured method of conceding defeat. I have done this many times before, but, as Gene pointed out, only with people who know me well. In this case, Klara seemed seriously displeased. She righted her king and continued.

  Fifty-two minutes later, Alexei knocked on my office door with an uncharacteristic grin on his face, and announced that he owed me a beer. (Experience suggests that this is only an expression, and indeed he has failed to honour the offer.) ‘You put her right off her game,’ he said. ‘I managed to salvage a draw.’ It turns out that Klara is a vastly superior player to Alexei and gives him a rook start every game. Her inferior position was merely the agreed handicap.

  It seemed to me that if Klara was intelligent enough to offer Alexei rook odds at chess, she would understand that my assessment of the position was rational, and that no apology was required.

  As in most matters of human interaction, Gene had a different view. In fact, that afternoon, he presented an unreasonable and annoyingly different view. He wanted me to take her out to dinner to apologise. I considered this a ridiculous and excessive idea for five reasons:

  If she (reasonably) refused my invitation, she would receive no compensation at all. In this case, even a Freddo Frog would be a better gift, as she was less likely to have an aversion to chocolate than to me.

  Taking her out would provide vast opportunities for further social errors, which would compound the original error. This would be unpleasant for both of us.

  Eating at a restaurant is highly inconvenient for me, as it disrupts an efficient system of eating at home.

  There may be some rule against a department head organising dates between an associate professor and a graduate student—even a ‘mature age’ one.

  She would probably prefer to have dinner alone or with someone else. A dinner voucher for two would cost the same as buying her dinner and not require any of my time.

  The Freddo Frog suggestion was intended as a joke, because Gene was being very pushy, but I considered the voucher option a minor stroke of genius, offering all of the advantages of dinner with me with none of the disadvantages. Then Gene confused everything: ‘She likes you, Don. She told Alexei.’

  I struggled to make sense of this. First, the whole dinner idea was prompted by the Toppled King Incident, and the resulting need to deal with Klara’s negative attitude to me. Now Gene sought to reinforce his argument by citing Klara’s positive interest in me. Couldn’t we just let one cancel out the other? Second, Gene should have known that this sort of exercise is pointless. From time to time women do show a sexual / romantic interest in me. I’m thirty-eight and single, heterosexual, in the ninety-ninth percentile of IQs, hold a prestigious and reasonably paid job, run and train regularly, own my own apartment, and work hard at observing society’s rules of dress and grooming. Unfortunately my brain has a fault.

  When I was six years old, my mother took me to a psychologist. I demonstrated my usual mental arithmetic and memorising tricks. Then the psychologist produced two boxes, one red and one green (it strikes me now that the colours were poorly chosen, as the experiment would be unreliable for colourblind subjects). He had a table-tennis ball, which he put in the red box. He asked my mother to leave the room, and while she was gone, moved the ball to the green box. ‘When Mummy comes back,’ he said, ‘where will she look for the ball?’ The answer seemed obvious to me at the time: the ball was in the green box. Why would she look in the red one? The psychologist showed no reaction to my answer, but, driving home with my mother, even I could tell that I had got something badly wrong.

  I would not make that error today. I can see objective things from other people’s perspectives, and I’m continuously improving my ability to predict the way people will react to various stimuli, as long as I have time to work it out. But under pressure, or in an unfamiliar situation, and always in the deepest part of my brain, I expect them to see things from my perspective—to know that the ball is in the green box. This is totally normal, and hardwired in, for those of us with Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a perfectly workable configuration for an experimental physicist. It’s just not very compatible with the sort of subtle, empathetic behaviour required on a date. After a while, you learn to live within your limitations.

  Gene knows all this, but he still wanted me to pursue the Klara opportunity. She was apparently researching the composition of dark matter, so he argued that we could talk physics all night, just like after a lecture. Which of course begged the question: why not discuss it after a lecture instead of in the hostile surrounds of a restaurant? I put this argument only half-heartedly, because ultimately I trust Gene’s counsel, and his own achievements in the seduction of women are very impressive.

  Gene seized on my indecision and booked the restaurant for that same evening, over my protests that I had already purchased dinner ingredients. Apparently Klara’s acceptance
was already established. I will repeat the instructions that Gene gave me, as the second is of critical importance in explaining the events that followed:

  Take Klara to the restaurant by taxi, rather than meeting her there (a classic example of a social custom creating inefficiency, although there was some small saving in fossil fuels to compensate for the extra travel time).

  Wear a jacket. This was mandatory, rather than a matter of appropriate personal presentation (a subject on which Gene has previously provided much advice). No jacket, no food, apparently. What can I say about this sort of rule?

  In defence of what followed, I submit the Oxford English Dictionary (Compact, 2nd Edition) definition of jacket: 1(a) An outer garment for the upper part of the body.

  I also note that the word appears on the care instructions for my relatively new and perfectly clean Gore-Tex jacket. But, when we arrived at the restaurant, which was part of a city hotel, the employee responsible for greetings had a narrower definition which appeared to require wool, buttons, decorative flaps and a colour other than safety yellow. Basically, he interpreted jacket as conventional suit jacket, and indicated his own as an example. He offered to lend me a jacket (apparently kept for others who also did not agree with his interpretation) but was not prepared to guarantee that it had been cleaned since its last use.

  In pursuing the definitional argument, I thought it relevant to point out that his jacket was in virtually all respects inferior to the one I was wearing. Key features that I listed included (1) impermeability to water, (2) visibility in low light, and (3) resistance to tearing. At this point, I had raised my voice and perhaps become a little insistent; in retrospect, it was probably unnecessary to have taken hold of the employee’s jacket to demonstrate the third feature. But suddenly a very large uniformed security guard appeared and physically assaulted me. Not content to pull me away, he grabbed me roughly and attempted to throw me to the ground. He was patently incompetent, and I was able to use a safe, low-impact throw to disable him without dislodging my glasses. Unfortunately he then became very angry, and I could not sensibly release him without risking a further attempt at assault. Meanwhile, the original employee was using his radio to call for backup. It was a very awkward social situation, and I could feel my mind shutting down.