In high school you probably learned that entropy was the loss of energy during the conversion process. When you burn logs of wood, the fire generated from those logs isn’t 100% of the energy in the log. Some of it is lost during the process.

While that’s a basic definition, I recently read another definition that made my brain pop. Entropy is equilibrium. In other words, a balanced state — the status quo. Ice cubes in a glass cannot survive the entropy of the surrounding room temperature. The cold temperature is lost to the water or room temperature, and the ice melts. Keeping the ice cold requires energy, and freezers use quite a bit of it. The same applies to writing.

Writing is hard because the default state of things is a high amount of entropy. You lose energy by just sitting there because you’re spending it on anxiety. At very least, there are only so many hours in the day you can remain awake, and the more time that passes from the moment you wake up the closer you get towards sleepiness. This is why I try to squeeze in my writing time early in the morning. Night is no good for me. I’m tired and I’m getting ready to give it up for the day.

The only thing that can counteract entropy is high energy output — writing a lot.

This is probably why the daily drops in the bucket frustrate me. A scene or two per day is a fine goal, and that’s working for me. But some days I feel very frustrated. I want to spend all day writing just to knock out five scenes, or ten.

Entropy = Chaos

Energy = Order

You need a high energizing order to defeat the entropy in your life. Lately, entropy has become my arch nemesis. It is literally the most evil villain of all time, in all the universe.