Embrace the Chaos

I am the sort of person who believes there is a correct way to load a dishwasher.

(Back to front; don’t @ me with that “anywhere you want” anarchy.)

I am also the sort of person who rebels against rules that I find arbitrarily restrictive.

(The Oxford comma is great—except when you don’t need it.)

This dichotomy—some would say contradiction—may have made me the perfect candidate for the experiment currently underway in my writing life.

It began with a casual comment that nearly set my brain on fire.

Last year, my friend and fellow author Peter McDade was kind enough to interview me about my most recent Tim Green novel, Home Was a Dream. It was a fun and intriguing conversation, two word nerds and fiction fanboys dissecting the story with joy and precision.

And then there was that one moment where all you could hear on the recording was a sharp intake of breath on my end, the non-verbal equivalent of Oh no you didn’t!

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Peter: Do you write in linear style, or do you jump around?

Me: I’m going to answer that question “Yes.” [laughter]. And that’s the honest truth. I typically will try to go in a linear fashion, because that tends to work better for me. But… [digression explaining two cases where I jumped ahead briefly].

Peter: So your default is linear. I’m a pure chaotic. [nervous laughter] I jump around to whatever scene comes into my head.

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I’m pretty sure I visibly flinched at Peter’s comment. Just write whatever scene you feel like, no matter how out of order it is in the narrative? Madness, I tell you, it’s madness.

Of course, after we hung up that day, I reminded myself that Peter’s trio of music-themed novels are three of my very favorite books in that genre. Hmm. This train of thought ended up filed away under Lessons I Should Possibly Try to Learn.

And then time passed, and I published my first children’s book, and began to contemplate the next Tim Green novel. The skeleton of an idea had been kicking around my brain for some time and I began to flesh it out, going so far as to construct a basic outline for the story.

Next, I started writing, got several thousand words in, and was feeling good about my progress and the direction the story was taking… when I got stuck. It’s a complex plot with a lot of moving parts and I realized that I still didn’t understand how some of them fit together.

I got stuck, and then I did one of those things writers sometimes do: I wallowed in my stuck-ness, for days, until it became clear that drastic action might be required. And then I thought of Peter, and his very different approach to writing, and said to myself: What have I got to lose?

So I thought about the scenes I had sketched out in my outline. Considered which of them I was the most enthusiastic about writing. And wrote that one.

And sat back in wonder as I realized… it was good.

So I picked another scene. Same thing. And another. And another. Before long I had that elusive, precious creature sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear: momentum.

After a couple of weeks of this, I had initial drafts of scenes and beats from several different parts of the story. I’ve now begun the work of laying them out in sequence and stitching them together, like squares in a quilt.

There’s a long way to go yet and I’m sure I’ll switch back and forth between approaches—sometimes, for me, there’s no substitute for writing a particular sequence in order, so that each paragraph, scene, and chapter builds on the last—but this compulsive outliner-and-organizer can now heartily endorse jumping around all over the place as a strategy for getting unstuck.

Whether it goes against your nature, or perfectly aligns with it, the lesson feels clear: embrace the chaos.