Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

when writers shrink from that uncertainty and seek out comfort
in the form of control and order. As he puts it so very simply:
“Insisting on control, having a plan or outline, and always
sticking to it is a prophylactic against organic growth,
development, change. But it is also a prophylactic against the
experience of chaos and disorientation which are very
frightening” (35). Regardless of whatever plan or purpose you
may have in mind, when you sit down to write, the stark white,
cold and blank page before you – whether actual paper or a new
Word document – is the very face of uncertainty and it can
indeed be a very “frightening” thing to look upon. What should
you say? How should you say it? And what will happen to the
whole if you do not say it as you should? I still have no love
for that feeling of unease, that feeling of loneliness, that
feeling of doubt when I stare down at that wordless page and it
has no answers for me. However, as I said before, I have
welcomed uncertainty with my writing because I have witnessed
what can come from it, what can come from the likes of
Bradbury’s advice and from Elbow’s advice. It can hold open the
door to foreign worlds, alien worlds, worlds that do not make
sense and do not feel safe. It can also hold open the door to
your world – your own already familiar and already known world -
but allow you to see it in ways you have never seen it before.
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