Novelist Maria Mutch, writing for Literary Hub:
Efficiency, rationalism, progress, all perfectly decent ideas that also call to mind the American highway-building madness of the 1950s, for instance, or the current financial paradigm of ceaseless and predictable growth, and which, left to overtake the novel-writing process, can obscure or squeeze out altogether what is mysterious and irrational, the invisible presence that makes everything in fiction tick. . . .
In writing workshops, whether I’ve been there as a participant or the teacher, I see writers who want the formula or the secret (but not the true secret, not the mysterious, irrational one). They often want the ten-step list, the actionable plan with concrete goals, a sense of progress and a pattern of coloured sticky-notes. These are fine things, by the way, and I myself am an inveterate list-maker with a hidden closet of index cards and navy gel pens. But this is just some scaffolding, a bit of staging for the real show, which is the grand encounter with uncertainty that is writing fiction, or writing anything at all. Or simply living. . . .
During a period of high anxiety, I dreamed of King Kong, who stood in the ocean and peered into a high-rise where I cowered with legions of people. When he pressed his face to the windows, I went wild. The giant, glistening eye, the nostril big enough to walk into! This is nuts! Was there glass? I didn’t know. I was deeply afraid, but also in awe. Then he turned and lumbered down the beach to terrorize others, which is what he does, which is what fear does: moves along. The point here isn’t the movie-version of camp-horror, but the more mundane energy undergirding the dream: things come and things go, and that’s what really frightens us (Kong himself was not going to have much of a fun end, but…what a ride!). The only certain thing is the inevitability of this flux, this coming and going, and the lack of a definite outcome. If a writing plan hides an unconscious desire to circumvent the irrational and unexpected, perhaps consider: sometimes King Kong will pick you up in his fist, and sometimes he won’t. . . .
I suppose what I want to say is that the uncertain and mysterious not only count for something, but are the drivers of everything. Perhaps this is why, deep down, we want to lay a template over them, establish a plan, corral not only what acts unpredictably but what we don’t and maybe can’t, fundamentally, understand. A Buddhist teacher of mine called approaching the wobbly world with curiosity and acceptance of it as it is “don’t-know mind.” Something else occurs to me here: Are we prepared to be dazzled by what we don’t know?
[When I teach writing, the students] don’t always want to hear this—it doesn’t match a formula, involve ten-steps or post-it notes, and the contact with whatever this nameless thing is can’t be forced. Most of all this. Whatever demands you make of the mystery, it will not respond. I’ve tried. . . .
I don’t think fiction-writing can be entirely civilized . . . nor should it be, with our attempts to heave it into a template. We can revel in taking a candle [into the cellar of our unconscious mind] and seeing only part of what is there. Perhaps what any writer needs is the willingness to visit the basement, to make sure our work has a basement, and a wild one at that. Does the plan allow for what we can’t control, what will turn up whether we like it or not?
Source: When Writing a Novel, Ditch the Plan and Embrace Uncertainty
Somewhat related, especially beginning around the 5:05 mark (and well worth watching in its entirety anyway):