I spent the first week of February not knowing what my next book would be about. Well, I knew the general direction, but the story refused to crystallise and that uncertainty was driving me crazy. I kept sitting at my desk, trying to force clarity, and growing increasingly frustrated when it wouldn't come.
Here's the thing: I've literally written about this before. About how productivity isn't just about focusing harder, about how creative work needs space to breathe. And yet, when I found myself in that uncertain space again, all that wisdom went right out the window. I fought against the uncertainty every step of the way.
What is it about uncertainty that makes us so uncomfortable? Whether figuring out what to study, how to talk to my teenage daughter, or what story to write, that feeling of "not knowing" hits the same way. It's not even about the stakes - my current book has no deadline or publisher waiting for it. But uncertainty doesn't care about logic. It triggers something deeper, more primal.
We live in a world that values certainty and control. We can schedule our day to the minute, including when the bus will come (thanks to CityMapper) and when we'll need to open our umbrellas (thanks to the weather app). These little daily occurrences give us the illusion of control. And we sometimes forget that it's an illusion. We cannot control the political situation, the economy, or even what other people do. Life, like the creative process, is inherently unplannable.
The breakthrough with my book did come eventually. I took myself out for a long walk on a rare sunny day, and the next day, when I was sitting at my desk, I suddenly knew how to look at this. I mentioned this in the newsletter I wrote that week: I was trying to write the book with my intellect, and I needed some time off for my creativity and emotions to catch up. When they leisurely arrived at where my intellect stood panting and stumped, they took one look and said, what if you look at it this way instead?
But the breakthrough didn't come because I took a walk, meditated, or sat at my desk fuming. The story emerged when it was ready, not when I demanded it appear. In fact, fighting against uncertainty usually just prolongs the process and adds a layer of self-recrimination to an already challenging situation.
I wish I could offer a neat solution here, some five-step process to make uncertainty more comfortable. But that would miss the point entirely. Maybe what we need isn't better tools for controlling uncertainty but better ways of living with it. Maybe it's about accepting that discomfort as a sign that we're engaging with something meaningful enough to be uncertain about.
Because here's what I'm learning: uncertainty isn't a bug in the system. It's not something I need to fix or overcome. It's a feature of engaging with anything meaningful, anything creative, anything truly worth doing. The trick isn't to eliminate it but to keep moving forward with it, through it, despite it.
And sometimes, when we least expect it, clarity emerges on the other side.
Comments