Q&A with Pierce Day

At the tail end of last year, something magical happened—a young writer named Pierce Day from New Zealand published his first-ever work: a hefty novel exploring one man's complete and utter obsession with his phone and curating his outward perception. 

There's nothing quite like witnessing a creator's debut. When Pierce's book arrived in our mailbox, what surprised us was its form—weird, playful, even difficult at times (but in the best ways). In our conversation, Pierce opens up about overcoming the terror of putting yourself out there and finding artistic freedom through self-publishing.

Who are you and what inspired you to write this story?

I’m Pierce Day, I'm 26 years old from New Zealand. I have, what many of my friends would say, a bit of a storytelling persona, so the book was a way for me to formalize that in a medium that I have so much love for.

I have an immense fascination with social media because it's been with me since my formative, early teenage years. I'm fascinated by the ability to talk to anyone in the world and see them in front of me at any time, and the desire to understand why behaviors that I see in myself and my peers have gone a certain direction with the rise of technology’s pervasiveness, especially post COVID-19. 

The novel’s main character, Warhol, is partly an exaggeration of my inner desire to unload or connect all this abstract thinking to my life. But he is also extremely flawed with opinions and attitudes that are useful objects of critique. 

This man is in the same room the whole story. He doesn't leave the room once. He's a voyeur to everything, yet he speaks to no one in person. Without another person he has no social contract, therefore he's a slave to his ego and that lets him run wild. I wanted to show what pure technological embrace looks and feels like to its extreme. 

What prompted the fearless act of deciding to write a book? Why self-publish?

It is terrifying. Setting out to write is a leap of faith. I didn't even think about writing a book until six months before I set about doing it, but I had such a love for stories where language doesn't have to be how it's presented on a screen—get rid of norms, get rid of language, misspell everything, have typos everywhere.

When I left my work and decided to commit, the idea I had in the first month changed four times. You can't set out with a plan. The important thing for me was letting go of having to figure everything out at the start.

The initial idea was to write 999 posts and post them in every single possible type of forum—Google reviews, Facebook posts, Twitter threads—around the Internet to create this linked story. Why does it feel necessary to speak in different voices on different platforms, and what are the limitations of that? I realized later that format doesn't really work, but starting with that approach allowed me to understand how form mattered to me. 

With self publishing, I think there are a few kinds of perceptions we have to challenge. The first thing most people ask after you say you wrote a book is “who was it published by?”, but when you say you self-published you see in their eyes that they question its quality. 

I did send it out to publishers, but it made me realize that without them I had the freedom to make every single artistic choice and live and die by those choices. That set a fire in me to go deeper. There's something about the old publishing model and its desire for a level of polish that I found harmful to the project itself. So I love the option to self-publish, make the cover myself, and just know exactly where every word will be.

One of the most liberating moments for me was realizing that the subject matter of my book [the phone] is right by the reader, sometimes in their hand while they're reading my book. If they have a phone right there or are going to use it as soon as they put my book down, then they know what it feels like, the sounds it makes. They have a familiarity with the content that allows me to get away with going far and wide.

Were there any peers or writers or influences that helped you be grounded in exploring non-traditional forms?

I will never stop praising or talking about James Joyce. I had a kind of casual interest in literature up until I read him. I picked up one of his texts, tried it, couldn't make heads or tails about it, and put it down. 

I went back to him and then just fell in love because I realized if you're trying to write about the right now or if you're trying to combine the sensory experience, everything has to be merged in the writing for that experience to be made immediate for the reader. With a phone, everything is 7 seconds which is even faster. James Joyce was really the catalyst for me to hone in on writing about the experience of Warhol picking up his phone. 

What's next? What do you do with the new reality that you've created for yourself?

One of the key anchors that guided me through the work was the main character never leaving his room, meaning you have to focus on his immediate existence and can integrate technology to its fullest extent. 

Now, I'm thinking outside the room and making the work a possible art piece in relation to a world that hasn't yet been made. I’m thinking futuristically and reading a lot of post-human literature and economic works to understand structures; how they adapt and why society moves in certain directions. What followed A portrait of the artist as a young man by Joyce? Ulysses. I'm inspired to think about how this book can leverage itself into a full world.

Technological communication is all about clear short messaging where nuance is often lost. This book is difficult only if it's approached in that same way; as easy consumption. I really encourage anyone approaching my work to let it hit them, and not agonize over the meaning of the more overt things. It's supposed to be provocative because it is experience and immediate thought that is never filtered. Trust yourself, the language used isn’t as arbitrary as they might appear on the surface.

Any final thoughts?

For those thinking of self publishing, I do think going through the traditional process (like creating materials like a pitch letter or information sheet) can help you gain a deeper understanding of what it is you've made.

There are moments as you're writing when you feel far away from everyone else. It's nice upon release to see through feedback, reviews, and conversations that the process or that doubt in those moments of creation were actually leading to a shared experience. That is what art is about.

I know there are so many people thinking of making a book or anything. Know that you can make it, and you can have it published here on Metalabel for your audience to find and be able to send them to an actual website, rather than just follow you on Instagram. I hope this inspires others to follow through and go make something.