Some people, apparently not me, can sit down and hack their way through a project from beginning to end, perhaps with some obstacles but largely through perseverance.
I, on the other hand, must contend with the Fuzz.
The Fuzz is an incorporeal cloud of particles, primordial quarks of uncertainty and terror, looming in front of almost everything I try to accomplish. You can’t see through the Fuzz or really much around it, and if you try to go through, you are pushed back with the firm indifference of nature.
(Actually, a NASA image of NGC 1333)
I don’t know what the Fuzz is or where it comes from, but I know I can kind of feel it on the inside of my skull when I get too close. It does no good to think too deeply about the Fuzz.
You cannot directly engage the Fuzz.
What you can do with the Fuzz is quietly and persistently probe its edges and create little outposts of what you know. They’re usually widely flung at first, but eventually they begin to bridge together and their accumulating mass shrinks the Fuzz to its true shape.
You discover what’s behind the Fuzz through parallax, like calculating the diameter of Pluto by measuring how long it takes Charon to transit across it, or like solving a crossword puzzle by answering first the clues you know for sure and then they ones you’re less sure of.
The Fuzz rejects all attempts at certainty and pre-imposed structure. Your only hope is to surround and compress it slowly, improvising with the push it gives you back.
They key to creative endeavors is to not look directly into the Fuzz or let it scare you but to hold it in mutual abeyance, like coming across an alligator on a walk through the woods: “You’re there and I’m here, so don’t mind me.”
That probably sounds mystical, but it’s actually the most concrete model I’ve ever contrived for how I work best, explaining why I seldom start at the beginning or end at the end, or why plots and outlines don’t help me. I have to sneak up on my subjects and improvise against that uncertainty.
In other words, you can’t make the uncertain certain by just thinking about it.
