This morning on the way to the dog park, I took a look around the room that is supposed to be our kitchen and cringed. Just the sight of it made me feel desperate.

The dishes in the dishwasher were clean, but unloaded. The dishes in the sink were not clean. The crumbs on the counter were man-made. The papers strewn over the counter were woman-made.

I tripped over the boxes that had held the new ceiling fan and light fixture, and one of the dogs almost wiped out on a piece of plastic that had held some mechanical part.

"But . . . I just CLEANED this room Saturday! I left it sparkling!" I wailed.

The dogs wagged their tails. (I am supposed to be wagging a tale, too, but I'm blogging instead.)Their cheerful response exasperated me. "If you only had opposable thumbs, young ladies," I told them, "you would be in there earning your keep." Their only comment boiled down to a happy wave of doggy breath in my face.

I looked around the kitchen again and was reminded of a line of poetry that I read waaaaaay back in college: "Never break faith with chaos." Now unfortunately I cannot remember who wrote that line (I recall being depressed because it wasn't me) but I still think it's brilliant. It was the beginning of a poem. I'd like to find the entire poem again and read it.

Chaos is the natural state of things, in kitchens and especially in writers' minds--unless these writers are very linear-thinking journalists. As a novelist, my brain is constantly in a whirl of plot lines, images, colors, smells, tastes, character traits, settings and emotion.

On any given day, during any given moment, none of them "go together" or make any sort of sense at all. It's all a jumble. It's chaos. But without that chaos, I'd have nothing to draw from in my drive to create order.

So here's my Monday Morning Thesis: chaos creates impetus. How do you like that? Agree? Disagree?

Okay, I'll modify the thesis. Chaos creates impetus for me. For example, I just made the mistake of walking into my office, now that the kitchen is clean.

The office makes the former state of the kitchen look immaculate, and before I can sit down at my desk and write the two chapters I need to write, I've got to clear the floor of the shipment of MEN AT WORK, my July book with Cindi Myers and Colleen Collins.

I've got to wade through all of the stacked drafts of TAKE ME IF YOU CAN, my April '08 Signet release. I've got to trip over the now useless HP all-in-one printer that I paid $550 for seven months ago, which they no longer make the parts to repair . . . but don't get me started on that topic.

My point is that the physical chaos makes me want to beat it. Order it. Create something out of it--just like the creative chaos in my author's brain. Sometimes when I need to get a chapter or a proposal down on paper and I don't know how to do it, I'll just start writing and tap the chaos. Do you guys do this?

At the end of the day, we still might not have anything remotely resembling conscious structure . . . but out of that unconscious, unstructured "splat," we can pick themes and images and ideas. Those we can weave together into at least part of a story. And then we can build the rest of that story in much the same way.

My dogs are sleeping now after their run in the park, and Lilah's funny little front fangs are hanging out. Merry's tongue falls out of her mouth and sticks to the floor, which always makes me laugh. How'd I get back to my dogs? Okay, it's a rough transition, LOL. But they had to embrace their chaos, too, before they could get on with their (cough) important work.

I should get on with wagging my own tale, now. Because the story's not going to write itself, and my editor is waiting. It's time to leash the chaos; take it for a walk; make it do some tricks . . .
and playing dead doesn't count!

Happy Monday, Karen