On Dec 19, 12:38 am, David Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com>
wrote:
> In article <1i9b4xf.t5a6d127alnmN%mbotto...@lshelby.com>,
> mbotto...@lshelby.com (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
>
> > This is not "writer's block" it's a wierd form of absolute exhuastion.
> > The brain takes up a rather startling amount of the total energy your
> > body produces, and being creative *is* an energy intensive higher brain
> > function.
>
> Two points, at a slight tangent:
>
> 1. It's true that the brain uses a lot of energy, and I can well believe
> that being exhausted, from whatever cause, makes it harder to think
> clearly. But is there any reason to think that being creative is any
> more energy intensive than other things we do with our brains?


Well both Dorothy and Michelle seem to be saying so and their
expereince is a good indicator.

I find it easy enough to be frivolously creative - I don't think that
flower arranging takes much energy or coming up with twenty things to
do with a dead squirrel or that kind of thing.
I can't write if I'm really tired because I think writing fiction is
quite a complex task and making up stuff is actually hard work.
Even on a good day when I write easily,after a couple of hours I feel
like I've been in an exam because I've been concetrating so hard. I
can write non fiction when very knackered (or at least I could when I
was in my twenties): finding words to express what I mean is less
difficult than trying to find out what I mean to mean next.

Nicky

In article
<1bf26465-e3d4-43b8-9d66-01d94b997730@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Nicky <nicky.matthews@btinternet.com> wrote:

> On Dec 19, 12:38 am, David Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com>
> wrote:
> > In article <1i9b4xf.t5a6d127alnmN%mbotto...@lshelby.com>,
> > mbotto...@lshelby.com (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
> >
> > > This is not "writer's block" it's a wierd form of absolute exhuastion.
> > > The brain takes up a rather startling amount of the total energy your
> > > body produces, and being creative *is* an energy intensive higher brain
> > > function.
> >
> > Two points, at a slight tangent:
> >
> > 1. It's true that the brain uses a lot of energy, and I can well believe
> > that being exhausted, from whatever cause, makes it harder to think
> > clearly. But is there any reason to think that being creative is any
> > more energy intensive than other things we do with our brains?
>
>
> Well both Dorothy and Michelle seem to be saying so and their
> expereince is a good indicator.

I'm not sure that the experience Dorothy reports supports the
conclusion. The experience is that she can't write when tired. That
doesn't tell us that the reason is that writing consumes lots of
energy--it might require you to have lots of energy, but not consume it.

Also, I suspect "energy" here is being used partly in a literal and
partly in a metaphorical sense. When Michelle says that the brain
consumes a lot of energy she is, I think, speaking literally--a
surprisingly large fraction of the calories a human burns go to keep the
brain going. But I suspect others are using the term in a more
metaphorical sense. If I say "I feel as though I have lots of energy
today," I'm not making a statement about calories.

It was the literal sense I was wondering about. Would one, for instance,
observe that the brain was giving off more heat when it was being used
to compose poetry than when it was being used to recite memorized poetry?

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now