C is for Create Chaos

Chaos. Doesn't matter how much we try to avoid it, we are enveloped by it constantly. It's hard to ignore, we worry that it will prevent us from finishing our manuscript, from getting to our workshop on time or from even finding where we saved that darn WIP. But Chaos can be our friend. Chaos is creative.

The popular film I Don't Know How She Does It uses chaos as the conflict in the plot. It's the chaos in Oliver Twist's journey that added colour to an otherwise drab and grey environment. I'm a plotter, and one of the drawbacks of that method is creating carefully planned events to form a plot. Sometimes I need to just let go and let chaos take over my WIP. This way my characters end up in predicaments that take me days to figure out how get them to rescue themselves. I need chaos in my writing, and, in my writing practice.

How can you write chaos if you don't experience it. Do you go somewhere peaceful and quiet to write? I do. But what about heading into a crowded loud place, like a food court at the shopping centre? Don't ignore the chaos, soak it up and write it! Describe the calamity, the overlapping conversations, the movement and mixture of smells.

Order and planning lives in the left-brain, while chaos sprouts from the right side of the brain, the same side creativity resides in.

"Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish." Chuck Palahniuk.