How to Write Through the Chaos

This month, I’ve been struggling with chaos that interrupts plans and steals attention—hardly a recipe for good writing. What can we do to keep our creative life alive when chaos reigns?

This is It Takes A Village, a monthly conversation about reading, writing, and community-building.

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My desk, one of the places where chaos reigns.

In this issue:

• On the Farm

• Writer’s Life

• Book of the Month—and the case for fictionalizing your story

• Bonus: Writing Prompt

On The Farm

The phrase “it’s a lot” has been on my lips and in my mind this past month. I think we all feel that way to some extent in this political moment when each news cycle brings fresh horror and feelings of helplessness. Here in central New York, we’re surrounded by farms that grow primarily corn and soybeans or raise cows, sheep, and goats. On Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, there are over 100 vineyards. All of our farming neighbors—owners and employees—now face worries about immigration and tariffs that make small farming even harder than it was before. Their concern and belt-tightening affect all the businesses in the area, from Agway and Beauty Barn to Ithaca Beer and the Zumba fitness place. ICE has been particularly hard on dairy farms whose employees are not seasonal and therefore have a different type of visa. Though these workers have made their homes and livelihoods here for tens of years, attending local schools and churches and being vital members of our community, they’re now targets for deportation.

With these politics as the backdrop, we’ve had personal stressors this month. We’re in the process of acquiring eleven additional acres, for a total acreage of fifteen, with the ambitious plan to rewild the new land. There’s so much to learn about the plants and animals already there, the best way to manage the huge deer population, and how to control invasive plants without the use of herbicides. Should we let hunters cull the deer herd in the fall to encourage the growth of desirable plants? Should we have an organic farmer farm it instead of rewilding to save effort and taxes? We’re doing a bit of hand-wringing about decisions that impact our finances, time, and energy.

The new land—eleven acres of red clover.

In the midst of all of this, my husband, Sam, became very ill mid-month. After two trips to the ER and a surgery, we await a second surgery. We feel certain the problem will amount to nothing serious, and will be confined to a couple of scary weeks—but, man, they’ve been very scary weeks.

Miraculously, I’ve had time to write, but have found it nearly impossible to clear the brain space for writing. My attention skitters across the surface of my day like a water strider on a pond. I feel as if I can’t drop down into myself, into the place where my writing lives.

Writer’s Life

I’m desperate to get back to that quiet place, alone, and without distraction. Consequently, I’m writing this to remind myself how I’ve escaped “chaos mind” in the past and to tell you, in case you need it, what has successfully gotten me back to the page when the world around me seems to be falling to pieces.

First of all, ignoring or pushing away the chaos or the problems is not the answer. They’ll only niggle and eat at your poor beleaguered brain until you attend to them. So, give them your undivided, short-term attention, and then put them aside. If the political situation has you in knots, attend a protest, join a resistance group, or make a phone call to your representative. Then get back to your desk knowing you’ve done something. If it’s a health issue, make a list of things that must be addressed. Exercise, call your doctor, do twenty minutes of research. Then return to your regularly scheduled writing time. In short, create boundaries that protect your creativity to the extent that is possible.

Second, find a quiet place. I don’t know about you, but it takes quiet time for me to find my inner voice. I have to sit still, undisturbed. The other day, I had a zoom call scheduled with my doctor to discuss routine blood work results. He was twenty minutes late getting on the call, which forced me to sit quietly at my desk doing pretty much nothing. I ended up thanking him for being late because about ten minutes into my twenty-minute wait, my brain began popping with inspiration. Meditation works this way for some people. Sitting silently in your car in a parking lot or even in your driveway can result in a rush of creativity. I’m currently in the process of building a “she shed” near our pond, a quiet oasis where I can stare into space undisturbed for as long as it takes to find myself.

More chaos—the she shed under construction.

Third, remember your why. Think about the core reasons why you want to write in the first place. This doesn’t just propel your butt to the desk chair because there’s something in it for you. It can also clarify the piece you’re working on, thus making the writing easier. It’s been my experience that why is intimately connected to about, and the most important question you can ask yourself when you’re struggling with a piece is What is this piece about, anyway? Jeannine Ouellette has some wonderful advice on “aboutness” here. On the surface, you may be writing about your upcoming summer vacation, but what the piece is really about is the loss of your mother or your own aging. Vivian Gornick distinguishes between these two aspects of writing, calling the first the situation and the second the story. Further, she posits in her book, The Situation and The Story, that story is driven by voice, by the narrator knowing who she is and why she is writing. What is it you truly mean to communicate, and why is it important to you? Just the process of exploring why and about can help you drop down into the introspective place where stories are born.

Lastly, if you just can’t write, read. When I’m truly, utterly, incontrivertibly stuck, reading a good book will cure the problem. In fact, always read like your writing life depends upon it, because it does.

Book of the Month

This month, I’m fascinated by Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. My fascination is twofold. The first reason for my fascination is Allison’s use of voice. In case you didn’t already know this, I have a sort of obsession with voice. The voice of Bastard is that of a young girl named “Bone”:

I’ve been called Bone all my life, but my name’s Ruth Anne. I was named for and by my oldest aunt—Aunt Ruth. My mama didn’t have much to say about it, since strictly speaking, she wasn’t there. Mama and a carful of my aunts and uncles had been going out to the airport to meet one of the cousins who was on his way back from playing soldier. Aunt Alma, Aunt Ruth and her husband, Travis, were squeezed into the front, and Mama was stretched out in back, fast asleep.

These are the first words of Bone’s story and, while she eventually gets around to discussing details of place, age, class, and race, we already know from this first paragraph that Bone is a young, white, southern child born into a lower class family she eventually refers to as “trash.” We’re hooked from the start of the book by this voice that knows exactly who she is, and therefore we trust her.

Through word choice, idiom, and rhythm—through voice—Allison builds an entire world:

Where I was born—Greenville, South Carolina— smelled like nowhere else I’ve been. Cut wet grass, split green apples, baby shit and beer bottles, cheap makeup and motor oil. Everything was ripe, everything was rotting. Hound dogs butted my calves. People shouted in the distance; crickets boomed in my ears. That country was beautiful, I swear to you, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Beautiful and terrible.

Even if you’re not into page-turning stories and unforgettable characters, this book is worth reading as a master class in how to create a compelling voice.

The second reason for my fascination with this novel is that it’s a novel. It reads like memoir and is based on aspects of Allison’s life. She states, “Writing Bastard, …I was arguing against the voice that had told me I was a monster—at five, nine, and fifteen. I was arguing for the innocence and worth of that child—I who had never believed in my own innocence.”

But, she says,

I deliberately made a fiction, not a memoir. … What I wanted was a story, not a recounting of my own experience. I believed in the worth of biography and even of ethnography, but I believed more powerfully in the reach of a well-told narrative that set out to pull the reader into the life of that child I had not been. I did not want to relate what had happened to me. I invented a loved creature to set against the memory of helplessness and rage. I wanted to invent a stronger, more resilient character,… one that could become almost mythic.

Allison’s reasoning for creating a novel from the facts of her life confounds and compels me. I have always believed that nonfiction was more powerful than fiction because it’s true, and that truth is more miraculous than any fiction a writer could create. But I have to say that Allison makes a very good point. If, like her, your goal is to draw the reader into a story that illuminates human nature more completely than is possible from any one person’s perspective, I see the point of fictionalizing, of having the freedom to take on other perspectives, and to ask what if, and of thus allowing the story to reach as far as the novelist can imagine.

I get it now, this fictionalization that friends have employed and that I have privately poo-pooed. It seems like something worth trying. How about you?

Bonus: Writing Prompt

This month, I’d like to challenge you (and me) to fictionalize a true personal story. To do this, take a true story you’ve either already written or that lives in your head and you’ve thought about writing.

Instead of the “I” that is you, invent a new “I.” Who is this narrator? How is she like you, and how is she different and why? What attributes does she need to be able to tell this story effectively? What does her voice sound like?

What aspects of your real story will you leave out? What will you add and what purpose do the additions serve? Will you combine true characters into a single new character? Leave people out altogether? Invent a new foil? Where does the fictionalization take place? Is place important to the original story? How does setting affect it?

Make sure to ask the most important question: what is your story really about? It’s never about what happens. It’s about what’s underneath what happens. What’s your underneath, and how can you best illuminate that with fictional elements?

I’d love for you to share how this turns out and what it feels like for you to fictionalize your story.

Thanks for spending time here with me. I truly appreciate it. Feel free to recommend It Takes A Village to other readers and writers and to send along your suggestions, questions, and thoughts.

--Jillian