I'm a pantser, not a plotter, so it was hard for me to get ready for Hurricane Irene last week. I'm used to winging it, in so many areas of my life, hoping against hope that things won't be as bad as predicted.
The down side is that I'm also a worrier. A darn good one, too, because I can inflate minor inconveniences into disasters of exotic proportions, all while I'm enjoying my morning cup of coffee.
Instead of stocking up on canned goods and bottled water, like most people did, I fixated on how I would grab my laptop and external hard drive if Irene's fury forced me to escape floods or trees falling onto my house. I assumed that losing my manuscripts probably wouldn't qualify for federal disaster relief, so for one brief shining moment I morphed from a pantser to a plotter, ranking my characters' safety higher than my own.
Now that the danger has passed, I wonder if it's possible to redirect that obsessive/worrying part of the brain into something a little more productive.
The best advice, of course, is: Don't obsess about the things you can't control.
Unfortunately the uncontrollable things are what cause us the most anxiety. Naturally we want to manage those things. And since they are out of anybody's control, it's obvious they need somebody to whip them into shape.
Yet most days I can barely corral my muse, let alone a Category 1 hurricane.
I try to take my worries and fears and anxiety and channel all of it into my characters, letting them fret about things that matter to them, things that will not demolish their physical environment, but will definitely wreak havoc with their world, whether it's a scandal in Regency London, or trying to avoid heartbreak in modern-day times.
But sometimes the act of writing feels like a hurricane we're trying to embrace, hoping it won't demolish us in the process. Our stories can seem too powerful, and wildly unpredictable--a big uncontrollable mass of plot threads, tangled and knotted, or missing entirely. It can feel like a monster looming over us, frightening us with its intensity, making us wonder why in the hell we thought we could make it bow down before us.
But somehow we can't stay away from wanting to revise and revamp and take charge of it. We fight back against the ungovernable fears that we're not up to the task. The desire to tell our story finally overpowers the deep-seated need to steer clear of disastrous failure.
Even before I've scribbled "The End", another story is forming, building strength as it heads my direction, with another one behind it, in an endless succession.
The urge to write has become uncontrollable.
Only this time I'm not going to obsess about it.
Donna: another story is forming, building strength as it heads my direction, with another one behind it, in an endless succession
I have never seen the writing process compared to weather patterns before Donna. You make it sound really exciting.
It's well known that weather has chaotic phases ... the flap of a butterfly's wing in Beijing causing a hurricane to hit New York.
In this case, Chaos is a technical term whereby a system evolves according to deterministic laws but the sensitivity to initial conditions means that the outcome is unpredictable with any finite computer.
That makes sense to me. The woman author's mind is like a chaotic weather pattern and quite unpredictable by mere finite male minds.
I already knew that ..... intuitively! *LOL*
Posted by: Quantum | September 06, 2011 at 07:08 AM
Q, I don't know if it's exciting, but I'd realized a long time ago that ideas seem to form in the same way that tropical storms/hurricanes do. I just don't know that they wreak the same havoc as violent weather does. LOL
And I like your definition of "chaos", and how it focuses on unpredictability (with good reason). I suppose my writer's mind seems unusual, by anyone's standards. LOL But now that I can explain why chaotic is a good thing, I'm happy! Thanks for that. :)
Posted by: Donna Cummings | September 06, 2011 at 09:40 AM
Great post! Unfortunately at this moment my writing is more like a leaking faucet. I don't know which is more dangerous! I guess that love/fear thing of the writing hurricane is that same feeling we had as kids standing on the porch trying to keep our nerver as thunderstorms rolled in. It's not for the faint of heart but, I agree, it's addictive!
Posted by: SGRedling | September 06, 2011 at 10:29 AM
Thanks, SG! I can sympathize with the leaking faucet -- mine seems sporadic lately too. And I guess it's that unpredictability that keeps us hooked, in so many areas of life. Definitely not for the faint of heart!
Posted by: Donna Cummings | September 06, 2011 at 10:41 AM