A Writer's Ethos of Chaos
"In warfare, engage directly; secure victory indirectly,"--Sun Tzu
I've been relearning process. I've had to. I've been going through a lot of psychological and neurological healing and integrating fragments of my identity into a healthier whole. A good thing, objectively, but it comes with the problem that I'm used to doing work in spite of my feelings, rather than because of them.
Which has led me to seeking the Zen in Chaos Theory.
Here's what I mean.
The Zen of Chaos Theory
I am not a physicist. With that disclaimer in front of you, here is my ten-cent understanding of Chaos Theory.
Chaos Theory does not propose that the universe is disordered. We're inclined to think that. Usually we use "chaos" to talk about erratic and disorderly agents in our lives--chaos goblins, like all my friends. Chaos is supposed to mean unpredictable and messy.
Chaos Theory doesn't propose that.
What Chaos Theory proposes is that beyond our feeble understanding there is an order we can't measure, and that what we have the capacity to perceive is the inexplicable remnant of that higher order.
I like it as a cosmic view because of how much space it leaves for change.
A Cosmic Personal Ethos
There are parts of it you can grab and use as a personal ethos. Or I can. You can do what you want. Just saying. This is cheap and available.
Chaos Theory proposes a cosmic and inscrutable order, and proposes that what we interact with is the inexplicable remnant.
Translate that to a personal ethos, and it starts to be permission to stop explaining yourself. It starts to become permission to stop apologizing. It plants seeds of the confidence to act without worrying about making sense to anyone else.
Because if you have made sufficient preparation in private, then when you take action where you might be seen then how you're seen doesn't matter.
You have become the authority for what you're doing. You have an inscrutable internal architecture that supports the action you're taking. Whether your actions make sense to anyone else mostly means they don't have access to the context; it doesn't mean your actions don't make sense.
I Hereby Bless Your Chaotic Process
As a writer, I have a lot of technical training and a great deal of practice applying that training in a great many arenas.
I also have a fragmented psyche. It's healing, but my identity does not agree with itself. I have a lot of demons of "you shouldn't!" or "why would you want that? nobody wants that!" or "justify it!" or "there's no value here! you can't make anything good."
I have spent a lot of my creative life relying mainly on technique and repressing my feelings. They attacked me a lot.
After a great deal of therapy and a lot of time and work, I've started to integrate enough of myself to work from the heart. Which I know diagnostically, not intentionally.
Because of that whole chaos theory: A Writer's Ethos of Chaos.
What's been happening is I've been working on stories that are informed by the architecture of technique that gives me headaches all the time...
But I haven't been making any technique-driven decisions about the creative parts of the storytelling process.
Every time I ask myself, "why would the character do that?"
Instead of trying to figure it out, I say, "Enough questions! Save them for later." And I move on.
I don't know why I'm writing the stories I'm writing in the ways I'm writing them. All I know is that I possess a great deal of training. But instead of making technical choices every few sentences, I'm avoiding any analysis of my intentions, and just taking the next action.
I'm accepting the uncertainty.
I'm embracing the chaos. Behind it there's order. A writer's ethos of chaos. That's good enough.
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