Gatherers and Farmers
Back when I was researching ADD, my good friend Chalain recommended a book to me. He then went on to describe the content of the book so well that I never bothered to actually get the book. The basic premise of the book is that ADD brains are not broken. They are just wired for hunting/gathering rather than for farming. These people latch onto a project and push themselves past reasonable limits to achieve it, like the hunter pursuing a deer. Sometimes the huge effort is hugely rewarded, other times the hunter goes hungry. This hunter/gatherer brain is contrasted with a farmer brain. Farmers are wired to do the same things over and over regularly. They plant lots of seeds. Then they tend lots of little plants. Then they harvest lots of big plants. Then they plow it all under and start again.
I am definitely a hunter/gatherer rather than a farmer. The farmer tasks in my life, dishes, laundry, house cleaning, fixing regular meals, these are the things that I always feel like I am failing at. I’m not very good about putting in small regular efforts even when I can see that it is the best way to maintain the system. It feels much more natural to me to wait for things to pile up and then to make a big effort to organize it all at once. I have known this about myself for a long time and I try to create my systems for getting things done so that they are complimentary to my inclinations. Some people run loads of laundry and fold a little bit every single day so that they don’t ever get too far behind. I do laundry only twice per week (sometimes only once) thus I focus on laundry for a morning and forget it for the rest of the week. But some things simply have to be done in a farmer way. Letting the dishes pile up makes the job harder and results in a chaotic kitchen. So I’m constantly trying to train myself to clear up dishes and load dishwaser every time I cook or eat. I’m better at it than I used to be, but it still isn’t instinctive.
The reason I bring this all up isn’t about housework at all. It is about writing. I haven’t written any fiction for weeks. As soon as I declared my intention to write at least 500 words of fiction per day, I stopped writing it at all. As I fell behind schedule I got angry with myself and frustrated over the lack of writing. But then I realized that dictating a daily word count is a very farmer way to approach writing and I am not a farmer. I was taking writing, which was very natural to me, and translating it into something foreign because that seemed the “correct” way to be proffessional about writing.
If I require myself to write a certain number of words per day, then that requirement sits in my brain like a burden. It adds to the stress of the day. If instead I allow myself to put down writing completely for a time, then I can pick it up again with joy at a later time. During the days I am not writing, I can still do things that will make me better as a writer. I can analyse movies and books for characterization and plot arcs. I can collect ideas and fragments to be used later. I can watch people and ponder why they behave the ways that they do. I can sit down and brainstorm to connect fragments and observations so they can be used later. In short, I can be gathering. Then I can sit down to do the necessary making.
This approach to writing probably means I will never be a prolific writer. I’m alright with that. I don’t need to write a story every week. Perhaps I’ll get better at this and I’ll write faster. That would be okay too, so long as I am still working with my natural rythms instead of against them.