The Gatherer

ieva — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:32:27 +0000

Yesterday, I was sitting with a friend, talking about various things (mostly gay sex…it’s research, all right? Being a writer has some perks), and I mentioned the hunter/farmer theory.
„And then there are the gatherers,” he said.
„Wha?”
„The gatherers. There were entire societies made of them, people gathering things, both the ones they could use right now, and the ones they could probably use later.”
„All right. I’d say that a farmer has to think four years ahead at least; a hunter lives in the moment, but for how long does a gatherer think?”
„Providing for all his life. See, I’m a gatherer. I just collect things, drag them to my cave. Books, for example. Do you remember those old-fashioned glass baby bottles?”
„Yes,” and I do. Those were made from thick glass, had designed measures (instead of printed), and were impossibly heavy.
„Well, I saw people throwing them out. I gathered them all. Probably I’ll need them.”
„Oh.”
„And an old wrought saucepan. It’s really useful.”
„Right.”

And I thought of myself; how not so long ago I really used to drag everything home, and how lately I’ve tried to abandon that instinct because, honestly, we don’t have that much room. I am still gathering some things—books, Moleskine notebooks, paper supplies, index cards—but it’s not like when I was a teenager and anything that had some artsy value in it ended up in my room.
I’m thinking that the Gatherer is another major way of thought, and writers can be gatherers, too. But how does that work for them?

i’m a hunter

ieva — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:05:22 +0000

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.

ieva melgalve » farmer

The Gatherer

i’m a hunter