There is a philosopher, I forget who, who has a scale of emotions with apathy and depression on the lower end. Confusion is a very high state. I’ve always thought that questions are much more powerful than answers. We are thrown (like a potter throws clay) to want the answers, but when we have the courage and fortitude to allow ourselves to stay in the question, in the confusion, the Universe opens up for us.

This is relevant for creativity.  When we “know” how to do something, when we know the outcome and every piece in between, there is no room for those wonderful little blips that the unconscious loves to throws our way on a project that we’ve been dwelling on for some time.  I like to map out my stories, consider them, design them, if you want to call it that, but when I sit down to write, I am always looking at the story pouring out on my computer screen as if it were something someone else wrote, as if I were reading, as my Mom used to say, “a thumping good piece of literature.”

With this as a way of looking at it, the story will often surprise you.  Your character will often surprise you and refuse to do what you think they should.  Writer Annie Proulx said she’d never experienced characters coming to life in that way and thought it was something writers say to sound mystical.  That is until she wrote Brokeback Mountain.  She had been imaging Ennis del Mar Jack Twist for so long and so deeply, with such compassion and emotion, that they did surprise her.  She had once called the “falling in love” with your characters “repugnant”, but then she wrote that story.

I like going into a project confused, unsure.  It’s an exciting place to be.  I recommend it for anyone who feels they don’t have the creative juices to write.  Or anyone who does.

~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.