i’m a hunter
Yesterday, I did a quick math about how much would I be able to accomplish if I worked slowly/fast/very fast over several years, played with my speed and varied the planning, writing and editing lengths and frequency to figure out how would I accomplish more without burning out. As a result, I got two years planned out (quite satisfactory) and I also felt incredibly bored by the prospect to write in that time frame.
“Writing isn’t fun,” I decided. “It doesn’t have to be fun. It hasn’t been fun for two months or so, and it probably never will. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be fun, has it? Granted, I stopped writing when it stopped to be fun last time around, but I was not this determined then.”
Then I stumbled on this article in Seth Godin’s blog and realized that I’d been wrong and I’ve been hurting myself for two months. (Go ahead. Read that article. It’s good.)
It seems that I’m way more a hunter than a farmer.
This is why I like advertising (the life span of a single project is usually very short, and it’s all about hunting for that seemingly random idea that is just so cool). This is why I like weird stuff happening to me. This is why I do horrible (or beautiful) stuff because I’m so spontaneous.
This is why after making a two-year plan for writing (and arriving at really promising results) I thought, oh my God, this is hell–and some people even do that for living?
This is why after buying a small Moleskine Volante (they’re the most pocket-sized of their pocket-sized notebooks) and frantically noting a cool character name with a short description, and a magic system that comes along with the inherent conflict, I felt awesome.
I’ll keep thinking about that, to see which tools and technologies for writing are hunter-stuff and which are farmer-stuff, and which are both.
In the meanwhile–what do you think describes you better, farmer or hunter?
Also, listen to awesomely awesome “Hunter” by Björk. That’s the same thing.
hunter, all the way – but not in a high-profile, venture capitalist way… actually I’d refine it (and I talk about it on my blog a lot) and say I’m at the forager end of the spectrum. Looking for something special, tuned in to what’s around me, wondering if it’s the day of perfect wild greens or if I’ll see the last of the wintering tundra swans as they leave. I’m out there talking to the unsee-ables, and I can’t garden worth a damn, apparently, though I love plants dearly (and think I ought to put in a garden ’cause the economy is convulsing). Or at least I can’t garden in a straight line – it’s gotta be hodge-podge, messy mixed-up hiding something half the seeds didn’t sprout and the rest are all a-scramble kind of thing.
That would make me a bad/unreliable pro-writer, too. I can and do sit down and slog through it – but had to give up on my previous WIP because it was going to kill me with boring. Not that I need an excuse for my evasive-mind which is birdlike in flitting about, but this makes me feel less… guilty, about what makes me happy.
“try stuff and see what happens” Yeah. That.
I’m actually thinking that there are many great writers who are/have been hunters by definition. For example, I think Mark Twain could have been one. I suspect that most of seat-of-the-pants writers are. At any rate, I don’t think hunters are “unreliable” by definition. After all, they all had families to feed, didn’t they? The only difference is that they couldn’t plant a rabbit behind a bush in spring and gather in autumn. I think that a hunter-writer just needs different approach to her writing. And, definitely, a hunter-writer must accept and celebrate the fact that sometimes you go out for a deer and come back with a bear.
But that’s a subject to investigate.
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