Physics can teach us a lot about the creative process.
Today at the Arizona Science Center I was enjoying the Planetarium show when the narrator began to riff about the interplay between potential and kinetic energy. It left me thinking about writing and the relationship between potential creativity and kinetic creativity.
Potential energy is all of the stored energy an object has as a result of its position in space. In terms of creativity this relates to all of the ideas we store up in our minds with the thought to write them down and turn them into something. They are potential in the sense that they represent all of our pent up creativity in relation to the ability to release that creativity in some form.
Kinetic energy is the energy of motion–the energy of doing. In physics potential energy can become kinetic energy. For example, if you drop a stuffed animal off a roof the potential energy in the stuffed animal converts to kinetic energy. The same applies if you drop a truck off a roof. The same also applies to writing. Your potential creativity–the stuff locked away in your soul–becomes kinetic creativity when you sit down and do something creative like writing.
Here is where it gets interesting.
Because of the transfer of creativity from potential to kinetic, you no longer have that potential creativity you once did. It is used up and something must be done to put you back in a position to be creative. You have to be displaced from this wasted state to a position where you can use your potential creativity to generate actual creative work.
There’s more to this. Hell, I think there is a book here. If one of y’all write it first I am suing.