Author Téa Mutonji once sought the ruckus of life — but now she seeks peace

Leading up to Canada Reads, CBC Arts is bringing you daily essays about where this year's authors write for our series Where I Write. This edition features Shut Up You're Pretty author Téa Mutonji.

All my life, I've needed drama. My baseline need is something closer to fireworks. Simpler even: movement. 

In adolescence, I lived in a comfortable house with fragile walls, a large family and some kind of distraction happening down the hall. The smell of my mother frying fish in the kitchen, the sound of my father yelling at a tennis match in the living room, of my brothers also yelling — the oldest upstairs because of something related to Kobe Bryant and the youngest in the basement because first-person shooter games have a way of getting underneath your skin. Somewhere else in the house, my baby sister is blasting music: Tupac, Aaliyah. My other sister, like me, makes no sound. She is in her bedroom, which is attached to mine by a joint ensuite. She is most likely reading. I am at my desk, using the window as a way of channelling it all, of trapping it in a box, needing that pulse to think.

When writing became less of a hobby, I needed to recreate this sensation to feel at home. I wrote almost every story in Shut Up You're Pretty at a bar, on the TTC or in the powder room of some house party. The more electrified I was by my surroundings, the more likely I was to complete the task at hand. The sound of the DJ yelling in the mic replaced the sound of my sister's playlist. The conversation between strangers in the streetcar replaced that of my father's pep talk with Serena Williams through the TV. And glasses clicking, shattering, being placed gently on a wooden table, that was my mother. I wrote the story Tits for Cigs on the TTC's 38A Highland. I was watching a group of teen girls in Catholic school uniforms laughing. I thought: How curious is the sound of teen girls laughing? 

That is in the past now, seven years gone. Too much of life — and consequently, death — has happened since. Now, I need something new. Stability isn't quite the right word, but something like discipline, a clear head. I need complete silence. I need light. I need a soft cushion to rest my head. 

In my new home (and every new home I've had since), I write on a large white Ikea desk. It's stationary. It offers no movement, no rollercoaster, no excitement. Further to my contradiction, it is also very clean, void of all interruptions apart from writing necessities, such as pens, markers and sticky notes. I look out of a large window — Lake Ontario stares at me. I see it making an appearance in the manuscript, in the novel, the same way little girls found themselves in every corner of the short stories. 

When my roommate walks in to say hello, I become instantly disarmed. I lose my train of thought. I am desperate for her exit (sorry, Taylor, lol). In her absence, I have to reread the entire paragraph, sometimes the entire chapter, just to regain momentum. Now, I keep the door to my bedroom closed, but the curtains wide open. I call on the sun, the blue and sometimes gray clouds. I see it happening slowly, the switch in my person, the steadiness in my prose. 

I write a novel in this tranquil state. It comes together last January in Paris. I've just been workshopped by my advisor, Raven Leilani, the author of Luster, at NYU'S Paris campus on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Absently, I return to my hotel before the end of class. I sit on the floor. The French balcony doors are open, the winter air is so clean and gentle and it is so quiet I get the impression that I have tapped into a new body: I write 15,000 words in one sitting. I find myself restarting the novel that has been feeding off of me for four years. 

In May, the new draft is complete. I think the story is the same — the feeling. The setting and the hour and the people and the delivery and the package have changed, but the pulse remains the same as in the stories. The writing discovers the place, but the place shapes the writing. Still, that rush of energy, that ecstasy is all that. 

To finish the novel, I needed to return to its state of birth. I needed to recreate that feeling of being on the floor in Paris, frenzied but so calm inside of it. Now, writing has become a private thing. It has become a room with an open window, a desk, a functional chair and plain walls. It has become the image of something like: peace. 

Read this year's Where I Write essays every day this week on CBC Arts and tune in to Canada Reads March 4th-7th, 2024.