Half Empty, Half Full

If I’m hungry, I pretend I’m not.

If I’m thirsty, I drink water or green tea with ginger, sports drinks, and technical smoothies with protein powder and glucosamine...stuff that tastes bad, but is good for me.

I hope that my purposful drinks will make me forget that I’m hungry.

If I need to write, I go for a run.

When I run, I count miles or steps until I am tired of counting.

When I write, it is because I am hungry and thirsty and tired of running, and I have exhausted my patience for counting.

I think of this as a kind of discipline.

,

But when I write:

Everyone is thirsty - and I let each of them drink what they want - even if they drink too much. Scotch, wine, beer...I don’t care. I let the them live.

When they are hungry, I allow them fries, truck-stop liver and onions with a side of dark gravy that arrives with a congealed skin on top, Big Macs and Slurpies, bubble gum and bubble tea, Vietnamese subs and Spolumbo’s sausages...Bernard Callebaut.

I allow them sex I would never have.

I forgive them their cowardice, lassitude, incompetence and incontinence.

I support them in their time of need and offer them a sympathetic narrator when their spirits fail.

I let them reach over my head, swim past me, go further, or deeper, darker, faster than I am capable of.

I am kinder to my characters than I am to myself.

...and when I am done writing, I feel full.

Get ‘em while they last.

Kari