 I have lived by quite a few tenets in my life, some have stuck and some have faded. Having been an athlete at varying levels of intensity and competition now since age 7, one tenet that has endured is this: “The hungry wolf hunts best.”
Meaning, the more you want it, the more you will be inclined to up-and-go get it. Hunger breeds necessity. And hunger can make you do both great and desperate things. In the world of sports, it can drive you to greatness, or it can drive you to ruin: injury, cheating, burn-out, despair. Growing up a swimmer, I got used to training for 6 months at a time with one competition in focus. And, as it would happen, I finished more seasons than not, hungrier than when I started. That could say something about my personal temperament, but brushing up against your goals has a way of stoking the fire in the belly. The times I fell short, it left a less pleasant hunger pain, but hunger for success none-the-less. I have found writing to be similar. It’s been a while since I last wrote here, and that post was all about the haunting I feel from my desire to write, especially when I don’t feed it. Well, since beginning the big push (big for me anyway) to market Book 2, “Into the West,” I’ve been feeling a lot like a hungry wolf. Not crazed, but lurking, sniffing the air, looking for some success to satisfy my hunger. Having dwelt on this for a while now, I have decided that I like the feeling of being hungry. I even like it physically. Who really enjoys a meal when they aren’t hungry? The most mundane food in the world can taste like ambrosia when you have been cold and hungry for a while. Hunger makes me feel alive. I like that. Writing right now feels like hunting, and finding readers and selling books looks like food. But that’s okay, because I like hunting, er … writing. In fact, I’ve been doing more writing of various kinds in the last few weeks than I have in ages. Blog posts (I started a new one – warning, it is political, though quite sincere), essays for competitions, meditative writing for myself, and “The Reaper’s Seed.” But don’t worry, I’m a nice wolf. |
