By Dr. Noelle Sterne,

Q: Whenever I start writing, all kinds of ideas start swirling around. How do I corral them?

— Creatively Dizzy

A: I’ve experienced the same, often. Whether I’ve scribbled a handful of notes in a frenzy of inspiration or actually made an outline, once I start to write that same itchy, unsteady, slightly nauseous feeling pervades. Not exactly illness or indigestion, it’s more of a nervous disquiet I can only describe as “creative limbo.” Doesn’t matter how often I’ve felt it or how many pieces I’ve started and completed. It rears up, and the ideas threaten to overtake me.

Searching for remedies, I began exploring works on creativity and anxiety. And I discovered answers that made sense, of all things, in “chaos theory.” I hope the answers will help you too.

What’s Chaos Theory?

Chaos theory has been developed and applied in mathematics, physics, economics, engineering, psychology, philosophy, biology, management, and leadership, among other disciplines. As scientists have observed, the major concept is that elements of “wild disorder” appear within otherwise orderly systems. Conversely (or similarly), within apparently disorderly systems elements appear of “unexpected order” (Gleick, 2008, pp. 56, 173).

To our dismay, those wildly disorderly elements can appear in our writing. We may proudly feel anchored in a newly-created neat, symmetrical, comprehensive (we think) outline; or an intricate but integrated map of arguments; or a list of crucial points, defenses, dramatic revelations, or subplots. But as we get deeper into the work, paths and possibilities start proliferating like runaway cell division, way beyond our plan. Random thoughts, questions, bits of essential (and nonessential) information, and voluptuous phrases that may have nothing to do with the current project pop into our heads and swirl in unruly combinations.

Nonremedial Remedies

When we’re besieged by such chaotic feelings, we tend to take refuge in any number of anxiety-battling behaviors. Some writers try to “force” the work and keep going, but every new attempt produces a dead end, or at least what they’re sure is trash. One writer I know gets a severe headache and must lie down in a shaded room with a cold compress and cup of chamomile tea. Another goes straight to his garage, picks up his sanding tool, and attacks the cabinet he’s refinishing. An accomplished scholar throws a blanket over her desk, drags out all her baking pans and makes eight dozen cookies—from scratch.

Another friend, an experienced writer, told me she immediately reminds herself that she’s feeling this strange “creative limbo.” This label helps her get through it more smoothly, but, she confesses, she still jumps on her stationary bike and frantically pedals fifteen miles.

Reassurance

As many creative people have acknowledged, the fearsome state my friend identified is necessary in any creative work. The great early twentieth-century mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré writes that the answers we crave “never happen except after some days of voluntary effort . . . where the way taken seems totally astray.” Such efforts, he assures us, haven’t been wasted: “they have set agoing the unconscious machine, and without them it would not have moved and would have produced nothing” (Poincaré, 2000/1910, p. 90).

More concisely, the poet Paul Valéry (1937/1952) declares, “The fact is that disorder is the condition of the mind’s fertility” (p. 106). When we accept this truth in our chaotic moments, we can bear them a little better and know their inconclusiveness will eventually prove fruitful.

Allowing Our Chaos

But to live in that “totally astray” limbo isn’t easy. We demand the answers now—just add a cup of insight for instant solution.

How can we allow the essential limbo? Especially in relation to chaos theory, I found an answer in another concept, that of “open systems.” An open system— applicable to science, technology, education, management, social sciences, and humans—constantly interacts with its environment and exchanges data, resources, and energy. As writers and scholars, we are intense, refined, and attuned open systems. We’re not only constantly interacting with but also observing, studying, analyzing, and recording our environments.

Margaret Wheatley (2006), a brilliant leadership expert, management consultant, and visionary, explains that open systems

maintain a state of non-equilibrium, keeping the system off balance so that it can change and grow. They participate in an active exchange with their world, using what is there for their own renewal. (p. 78)

Don’t we do this, chaotic-like, all the time? We think a piece is finished and, in the shower, a new insight or conclusion hits us. We realize we haven’t discussed a major limitation in our article. We’re beating the bejeezus out of scrambled eggs and a final conclusion appears that ties the whole thing together. Out of nowhere, an explanatory diagram appears before our eyes that explains the interrelationships of our four qualitative themes.

When scientists began to look at the ways systems grow and develop, they noticed that a system, whether chemical, organic, or human, deals with outwardly inapplicable stimuli or foreign substances by trying to subdue them. We can be tempted to the same action in our writing projects: when disturbing observations and ideas intrude, we often try to shut them down with all sorts of avoidance tricks. In the process, though, we often block ourselves not only from writing but also from the best, most inspired ideas.

Allowing Our Random Ideas

If instead we permit those swarming thoughts their natural course, an unexpected thing happens. As Wheatley (2006) describes, “if the disturbance survives those first attempts at suppression and remains lodged within the system, an iterative process begins” (p. 96). When this process of repetition that seems to go nowhere continues, the system—miraculously—gradually evolves toward its solutions.

A startling and beautiful illustration of chaos to resolution that may parallel our writing experiences can be seen in the “Three-Winged Bird: A Chaotic Strange Attractor.” It was created to trace the journey of a system in chaos (reproduced in Wheatley, 2006, p. 79; see also Jantsch, 1980). A simple nonlinear equation was entered into a computer and plotted as a point in three-dimensional computer space. Through millions of repetitions, lines representing it appeared on the computer screen, superficially random and meaningless. But eventually, the system’s form became visible, like the “bird” (see illustration).

As if it could be visionary art, the three-winged bird embodies a basic principle of chaos theory: what appears as disorder in our usual, limited, daily perspective is only order in the making. Within the chaotic circumstances reside the very seeds and prototypes of wholeness. The rather startling conclusion: There is no chaos.

Resolution of Chaos

In our writing (and lives) the seemingly chaotic is often indispensable. Much as we wish our works to spring forth faultlessly and infallibly reasoned, they rarely do. We get an idea, and suddenly the ending pops into our minds. Or we hear an internal riveting first line, as if dictated, but are stymied as to what should follow. A question no one has asked in our field lights up our brain, and we know we’re onto something. As we recognize the principles of chaos and the open system that are part of ourselves, we will more easily tolerate the unnerving process of creative limbo. So, how to handle those runaways? Well, first, let them stream out and zoom around like drunken electrons. Endure them, watch them, even accept them. They will slow and settle down.

We’ll learn through these processes and our iterative drafts what should be recorded and what should be winnowed (or maybe tucked away for another piece). We need patience and trust. In following our leanings, our questions come to be answered, our pieces begin to fit, our doubts dissolve. When we allow our creative limbo, the unsettling elements eventually swirl into order and produce our writing, our three-winged bird.

References

Gleick, J. (2008). Chaos: The making of a new science. Penguin.

Jantsch, E. (1980). The self-organizing universe: Scientific and human implications of the emerging paradigm of evolution. Pergamon.

Poincaré, J. H. (2000/1910). Mathematical creation. Resonance Reflection, pp. 85-94. http://vigeland.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/Poincare%20Reflections.pdf

Valéry, P. (1952). The course in poetics: First lesson (trans. J. Mathews). In B. Ghiselin (Ed). The creative process (pp. 92-106). Vintage Mentor. (Original work published 1937)

Wheatley, M. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehler.