Mind in Motion

Dear Reader,

Do you know what momentum is? I am not a science-y person so I will not pretend to know more than I actually do, however, I do recall a simple definition of the term from a high school physics course. Momentum is, simply put, “the quantity of mass in motion.” From a physics perspective, momentum is the product of mass (or weight) and velocity (speed in a given direction), as a formula this would be p=m*v. From an everyday-human perspective, momentum is the ability to move forward with deliberate effort.

p = m * v

momentum = mass times velocity

Right now, I have a lot of internal momentum for a project that I am working on. If you write, you know that sometimes writing can be hard. Is writer’s block real? Perhaps, but to me, the inability to write is simply the absence of momentum. For writers, momentum = the ‘will to write’ (or mass) times ‘the purpose of the writing’ (or velocity). The ‘will to write’ is considered to be the ‘mass’ because it is like an imaginary force that can be big or small like a weight. The ‘purpose of the writing’ is considered to be ‘velocity’ because purpose indicates direction, much like velocity, and implies a certain degree of ease in writing (similar to speed). If your ‘will to write’ is high, but you have nothing to write about (i.e. no ‘purpose of the writing’), then your momentum is 0. If you begin writing without purpose then you will only produce lines on a page without meaning. Similarly, if you have a strong ‘purpose to write,’ yet you have no ‘will to write’ then you are unlikely to get the pen to the paper at all.

Simply put, in order to write, one must both have a desire to write and also something they are interested in writing about. It sounds simple, but oftentimes, especially when we are stressed, we have trouble putting together all of the pieces before we begin to craft words on a page.

I often felt momentum-less about writing when I was in grade school. So often were we tasked with writing some drab follow up to a text we had read earlier. Writing a five paragraph analysis of a dry text does not usually instill one with the ‘will to write’ even though the ‘purpose of the writing’ has been assigned.

Today, I was lucky enough to find myself at the corner of a strong ‘will to write’ and ‘purpose of writing.’ I am writing a piece for a project. The tricky thing for me is that this piece includes many technical aspects which have me looking up things in Google at every sentence just so I can check to make sure that I got the details right. However, after concentrated research on the topic, I finally felt like I had enough knowledge to write my piece.

At last, the ‘will to write’ and the ‘purpose of writing’ reached an all-time high for me today. How lucky that was… if only for a little bit. Unfortunately, Dear Reader, momentum alone could not get me through my writing assignment. I am a very human human and it is very past my bedtime. Fatigue is a horrible obstacle in any activity. For me, it means that sentences, although written rather quickly, are missing words or they jump in logic. My writing was sloppy today, but at least I managed to get many of my thoughts down on paper.

Unlike physics, human ‘momentum’ is mostly a mental process. Do you like to write, Dear Reader? If so, I am sending you positive energy that will hopefully fuel your momentum and get your mind in motion.

Happy writing.

Love,

Raven