On Matters Of Mass

I picked up a funny tic in my formative years where I apply the law of conservation of mass to just about any creative effort. Logically, I'm aware that scientific principles can't be translated so directly to largely emotional, intangible things, but in this case, such thinking has never led me astray.

Summarily (and towards my purposes), the law implies that mass can't be destroyed or created, only redistributed or changed in some way. I believe this is true towards creative works and the amount of energy that goes into them. This is especially important when I experience a writing session that doesn't feel as 'productive' as I want it to. There are other times when I write a great deal of words, but in the editing stages, I'll remove the same amount of text I was originally so pleased by.

Thinking of the work as 'mass' helps me to focus on so many aspects, not the least of which I've mentioned before: a fear of breaking the story somehow. This story cannot be broken because mass cannot be broken. I could shatter it a thousand times and scramble the words, but it will never be truly unrecoverable: even the concept would survive the total destruction of the text itself.

Applying it even further, I'm left with some important points.

Word count is not equal to quality. (Longer isn't better.)

Brevity in content sometimes requires more time to write than longer text.

Revision isn't a waste of time. (Up to the point of maximum optimization.)

Rewriting is never a tragedy, despite the feeling of having 'wasted' time/effort.

I could think of several others, but the exchange in this 'isolated system' is easy to see. As long as I'm persistent, this mass will adapt itself accordingly, not by any great will of my own, but by keeping the flow of energy and unfettered exchange open.

There's a secret danger with this thinking, of course, but I'll speak on that another time. For now, it's enough to realize that I am powerful enough to render a novel into existence, but I am not powerful enough to destroy it.