Mess

This text is about mess, feelings of loneliness and loss, and their potential creative power. In a recent paper on collaborative writing, Wegener (2014) shared her experience with the reader on how a writing refuge almost turned into a prison. Having spent two days at the refuge, piles of paper with interview transcripts and field notes were a total mess. The themes in the writing she had constructed beforehand in her initial analysis seemed irrelevant and boring now after working with the actual texts for two days. Feeling lost, Wegener realized that she needed to break free and do something, so she eventually decided to leave the research files behind and enjoy life in the sun outside the dirty windows in her room (Fig. 12.1). She walked out along the beach, and when she returned, she began reading A. Bryatt’s A Biographer’s Tale, which she found by chance in her messy suitcase. The book was simply meant to be leisurely read and not intended to serve as a research tool; however, soon, Wegener found herself writing a fictional dialogue with the protagonist Phineas from the tale about feeling lost and in need of creative inspiration (see also Chap. 8). Interestingly, this unplanned interaction with the fictional character not only provided a sense of companionship but also initiated a process of introspection and self-discovery. This underlines the potential of unexpected encounters, even with fictional entities, to spur creative thought.