Chaos and Order

Henry James said, "Chaos in the law of nature; order is the dream of man."  Fiction and autobiography attempt to impose order on a writer's life.  John Cheever wrote to try to make sense of his life. Wallace Stegner felt, "The life we all live is amateurish and accidental, we can't practice for it.  It begins in accident and proceeds by trial and error towards dubious ends. That's the law of nature."

Stegner said we try to go beyond a dream and give life purpose, direction, meaning or with a darker frame of mind that it has no direction or meaning.  We cannot let it alone.  We examine it as Socrates did who felt an unexamined life was not worth living.

In the fifth century Socrates dedicated himself to careful reasoning. He sought genuine knowledge rather than victory over an opponent.  Socrates employed the same logical tricks developed by the Sophists to define a new purpose - the pursuit of truth. He called everything into question with a determination to accept nothing less than an adequate account of the nature of things. This made him the first supporter of critical philosophy.

Writing creates order for us.  We can invent characters, create an environment for their behavior to unfold within, or develop imagery and make something out of the chaos that flows through our minds. 

Take something that's important,  that you've brooded about and see it as completely as you can.  Fill in the gaps and fix it with words.  All you want in the finished print is the clean statement of the lens which is yourself on the subject that has drawn your attention.