Kinetics is the science of “motion of masses in relation to the forces acting on them,”  kinetic energy being “energy of a body which results from its motion. . . ½ mv² , where m is mass and v is velocity; opposed to potential energy.”¹ Please pay attention to the idea that a body in motion has energy and a body not in motion has only potential energy—potential energy, as in potential novel, like the novel you’ll write one day, and as long as it’s in your head, it will always be good and always be a bestseller—potentially.

Back to kinetics. Kinetogenisis is a biological term referring to “the genesis of organic structures by kinetic operations; the doctrine that animal structures are produced by movement of the animal.” ²  Now let’s turn back to fiction (or any other kind of creative writing).

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Why Dance with the Gorilla? It goes way back. My father fought a gorilla when I was a baby. (Long story.) The point being, wrestling the gorilla worked well as a metaphor for so many aspects of my life, including writing: wrestling with ideas, characters, nouns and verbs, commas, wrestling time away from the rest of my life to write, wrestling with a story taking shape on the page, wrestling with the imagined in nonfiction, the truth in fiction, wrestling with the line, the rhythm, the syllable count in poetry, wrestling with plot and subplot, the angst of rejection, the price of acceptance, the mechanics of grammar and the exasperating science of spelling, wrestling with my sabotaging surface urge to do the dishes or get a glass of tea or watch Lonesome Dove instead of nurturing my counter, deeper urge to sit down at the desk, keep my restless fingers on the keyboard. The list goes on. Continue Reading »