Trusting the open road

In my work life there are clear gains to thinking and acting proactively — for example, showing early design ideas to the printer can anticipate or thwart production problems. It also helps to follow schedules and process protocols.

But in writing fiction, for the past few years I've been rediscovering an aspect of creativity that gets short shrift, an unsung hero I met in art school but hadn't seen much of in the years of production planning. 

And that is to trust in emergence, the notion that answers and solutions will evolve out of the shadows and clouds and mists.

You write with a synopsis or plot outline. You plan each scene to carry the plot forward to a new wrinkle, a fresh struggle, but you want it to be a dynamic process built with a sense of "spontaneous order." If you keep the process open and porous, new ideas and variations will often present themselves despite best-laid plans. Think of it as making a trip, marking Point A to Point B, but learning the detours enrich the journey far more than speeding forward, blinders up, towards the destination itself. 

The world is filled with triggers to emergence: lyrics of a song overheard on the radio from the car next to you in traffic ... a TV character who has nothing to do with your book ... a random comment made by a friend or colleague .... 

The point is, if you keep an open mind, your radar will catch it, assess it, alchemize it.

You can also trust your characters. Last week I wrote a scene between a mother and daughter with a particular end goal in mind (Point A to B), but as their conversation developed (with the mother remarking upon some trees that remind her of her childhood), fresh questions came up that are natural to each character. ("Who are your people?" the daughter asks her mom. "Why don't you ever speak of them?") Suddenly both characters have an issue and a depth that I couldn't have planned when blocking out the synopsis.

So when I feel stymied — "How the hell is this book going to end?!" — nowadays I'm learning not to fret so much. Not all answers appear at once, but if you're doing your job, you're beckoning them towards you. And you only have enough energy for today's questions. Keep an open mind, don't overthink the problems, and inevitably the answers do emerge, like gold doubloons uncovered by receding ocean waves. They've been there all along, like buried treasure. And usually they're better than anything you could've planned.