Writing While Hungry

I compromise Right now my husband is cooking dinner. When he's done he'll bring it into the study and I'll eat/write. I'm the type of person that forgets to eat if I'm on a good writing kick. I often go the entire day without eating. It upsets my husband that I don't eat enough. Sometimes if I refuse to stop he insists on feeding me. LoL. I'm high maintenance.

I don't have three big meals a day. I eat little and often so perhaps have 4 or 5 small meals. Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, supper.

Breakfast is a bowl of cereal and/or a pot of yoghurt. Lunch is a bowl of soup. The snack could be a sandwich or toast. Dinner is my biggest meal but even then is usually something like a gammon steak or piece of fish. Then for supper I have whatever takes my fancy. Sandwich, cup-a-soup, toast, whatever.

scarletpeaches said:

I don't have three big meals a day. I eat little and often so perhaps have 4 or 5 small meals. Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, supper.

Breakfast is a bowl of cereal and/or a pot of yoghurt. Lunch is a bowl of soup. The snack could be a sandwich or toast. Dinner is my biggest meal but even then is usually something like a gammon steak or piece of fish. Then for supper I have whatever takes my fancy. Sandwich, cup-a-soup, toast, whatever.

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Wow, a whole pot of yogurt?!

(Sorry, pots are bigger over here -- like, I cook spaghetti in them... )

Really, though, what you do is a good idea. Better to eat small meals throughout the day... keeps you from getting sleepy.

A pot of yoghurt would be about 250ml, just to clarify.

I did experience this problem. In response, I wrote a poem:

How strange that emptiness is filling
Like a bubble growing gas
How strange I might just up - explode -
in how my hungers last

Thus so - to fight the filling -
I fill - I fill - I fill -
Until the empty all of me
Fades empty in itself -

(composed whilst hungry in college, attempting in vain to write a paper on emily dickinson...)

If you're hungry, go eat something! Carrot sticks are great to nibble whilst typing and will only barely spoil your dinner!

Avoid the eggplants, though, because nobody likes purple prose.

Two things I never do on an empty stomach: shopping and thinking. Too tired after eating? Is that an indication of really tough meat or eating too much? I have found that if I eat a late meal, tiredness can follow.

4 to 6 meals per day is good. Just topping up the body rather than flooding it 3 times a day. Anyone need to loose weight? Eat less! A little can be digested easier than half a cow. And depends on what you eat too. Vegetables are good but on their own may leave you listless. Full on protein can do the same; body working hard to get it all digested. Carbs may give you a lift but you'll fall flat very soon. Eat all three and there is a complement which can take you a long way and give your brain an overall waking up.

Don't forget to follow with chocolate.

Draco...
[o]

DracoMerest said:

Don't forget to follow with chocolate.

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My butt agrees with this statement.

DracoMerest said:

4 to 6 meals per day is good. Just topping up the body rather than flooding it 3 times a day. Anyone need to loose weight? Eat less! A little can be digested easier than half a cow. And depends on what you eat too. Vegetables are good but on their own may leave you listless. Full on protein can do the same; body working hard to get it all digested. Carbs may give you a lift but you'll fall flat very soon. Eat all three and there is a complement which can take you a long way and give your brain an overall waking up.

Don't forget to follow with chocolate.

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I found this to be strangely poetic...

And I just ate and I'm definitely feeling sluggish. Now I'll have to wait an hour or two before I can type top speed again. *sigh*

If your not hungry now, you should be working on a ms, not here in a chat...

It's nearly 8am. I'm getting tired, nearly bed time for me. yes, 8am. just after taking my daughter to school, I stop and the shop, come home and sleep for a few hours. Hmm, I do feel like pie right now. I wonder if the shop has one of those, umm, what's the name... that red vegetable, very sweet.

DracoMerest said:

It's nearly 8am. I'm getting tired, nearly bed time for me. yes, 8am. just after taking my daughter to school, I stop and the shop, come home and sleep for a few hours. Hmm, I do feel like pie right now. I wonder if the shop has one of those, umm, what's the name... that red vegetable, very sweet.

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Rhubarb.

I wonder if rhubarb goes well with a nice glass of sauvignon...

Whenever I try to write hungry, my characters always end up having something to eat, whether it's good for the scene or not! I tend to eat dinner fairly early in the evening, though, so it's not an issue too often.

DracoMerest said:

I wonder if rhubarb goes well with a nice glass of sauvignon...

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This rubarbb goes well with everything...

I often go the entire day without eating.

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Hehe, me too. I go so long without eating, it's bad.

...but right now, after reading this thread, I'm so hungry. I just ate too. Shoot. There goes that whole dieting thing. Blah, it's too much work while I'm trying to write a novel anyway. Hurray for carbs.

As an odd aside: When I was in college, all of my dissection classes were right before lunch break - so I would be cutting things open while my stomach was growling and I was thinking of food.

After that, during my 10 years in the Veterinary field, every time we'd go into surgery, my stomach would growl.

I haven't had much appetite the last week or so but have been writing just great.

wake up: 11. Go for a run. Around 1 my mom freaks because I don't want to eat. I force-feed myself a sandwich. Around five, dinner. Might have a snack around 9-11.

Food does not fuel me! ...?

MidnightMuse said:

As an odd aside: When I was in college, all of my dissection classes were right before lunch break - so I would be cutting things open while my stomach was growling and I was thinking of food.

After that, during my 10 years in the Veterinary field, every time we'd go into surgery, my stomach would growl.

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-Michelle

Mystic Blossom said:

I know it seems like a silly subject, but I consider it to be a serious problem. I tend to lurk on my computer when I'm waiting for dinner to be ready, and while computer time would seem to be the perfect time to get some writing done, I find it hard to concentrate on writing when I'm hungry, and by the time I'm done eating, I'm too exhausted to write. Has anyone else ever experienced a barrier like this?

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I can't write when I'm hungry, and I can't write when I'm completely sated because I'm so darned tired. It's kind of a catch-22 that doesn't seem to have any way out.

But I find, believe it or not, that I don't have to fill my stomach all the way up to be satisfied. Eating, say, a small meal before writing, does not make me nearly as sleepy as eating a big meal.

I actually get my eating habits from an old proverb (in the Proverbs, no less). It says, "Feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and say, 'Who is the LORD?' or lest I be hungry, and steal, and take the Name of my God in vain."

Not that I'm trying to make a sermon out of this or anything of the sort, but rather I find a lot of common sense in the proverb quoted above. If I'm too hungry, I can't do hardly anything without thinking about my empty stomach. If I'm too full, I forget everything and can't do any writing either.

So for me, I find the best way to handle this situation is to eat a small meal and then, as it settles on my stomach, it gives me just enough satisfaction to be able to do the things I need to do, without making me ultra tired.

As an odd aside: When I was in college, all of my dissection classes were right before lunch break - so I would be cutting things open while my stomach was growling and I was thinking of food.

After that, during my 10 years in the Veterinary field, every time we'd go into surgery, my stomach would growl.

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*laughs* It's like you were trained to get hungry.

MidnightMuse said:

As an odd aside: When I was in college, all of my dissection classes were right before lunch break - so I would be cutting things open while my stomach was growling and I was thinking of food.

After that, during my 10 years in the Veterinary field, every time we'd go into surgery, my stomach would growl.

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Told ya!

Sincerely,
Pavlov

If the writing's going spiffingly, I completely forget to eat.

No, I'm not a size 0.

I'm one of those people who forgets to eat when things are going well, or, I suppose, when I just don't stop to think about it. However, even though I forget to eat at all when I'm writing and things are going well, I can't start writing anything if I'm even a little bit hungry. All my creativity gets swallowed up into that section of my brain that goes ....food? please food? now food? food good. (I haven't eaten anything yet today. It's beginning to show in my grammar, I admit.)

I can, however, write very well when full. I just don't choose to, because all that food makes me sleepy.

Eating and writing are two of my favorite things. Even better when done together.