Runaway Train

This creativity thing's a bitch.

No, that's not true. Again I'm being a bit dramatic.

Creativity, creating, is a mystery. A wonder. Yes, it does take a lot of energy-- when you are standing on the outside, it seems to take a prohibitive lot of energy.

It's just too much! But when you're inside, it's like you're caught up in the whirlwind of creative energy and you just can't help yourself. The ideas, the thoughts, the output, all keep coming.

Now, hold on there a minute, Rowena. If I make that my story, then I think I may end up makiing it harder on myself. If creating is something that I am powerless against, almost at the mercy of with no energy expended on my own, then whenever I was not just being swept away by the winds of art (rhymes with fart), I would feel cheated, feel it was too hard, feel like a failure.

Truth is, sometimes when creating is going full steam ahead, and I am caught up in it and hurtling forward so fast it feels like I will never stop, it feels like I am just cauht up in it, carried away-- but to only look at that runaway train is to not see all the effort that has gone before it.

There would never be a runaway train without the grinding start up-- Chug-a. Chug-a. Chug-a. The train wouldn't go without the slow build up and the constant stoking of the fire. Then there's the laboring up the hills, (I think I can, I think I can.)

The long stretch of unchecked momentum is just one part.

You know, you could take that metaphor a lot farther. Because that train wouldn't be going without those who laid the tracks across country. Or the industrial revolution that caused the trains to be. Or the immense age and pressure that created the fuel inside the earth. Or the big bang and resultiing gathering of the mineral matter needed to create a planet with bones of iron, that could hold and nurture all that we know of life.

Creativity is a mystery and a wonder. I don't know specifically where it comes from or how it can happen, but I have a sneakiing suspicion that it comes from everywhere, and everywhen. And it takes no more energy than it does to live.

Easy.