drinking and writing: good or bad?

see: heroin and jazz

hungover & writing = either unbelievably worse or the greatest thing man has ever known. It depends on you and the weather. But drinking and writing = always bad. I mean when I'm completely fucking frunkkked I write like it's 1779 and I'm a founding father but it's never, ever good. Lack of inhibitions = insipid "insights" which you weigh far too heavily, and you end up spending paragraphs, nay, essays on shit that only you, and by that I mean the fucked-up you, not the real person, care about enough to waste 1500 words on. It flows easy, but it's garbage.

Speaking from personal knowledge and well-documented experience,* drunken folks will tend to wax extremist in their views and spin fantastic forest-for-the-trees scenarios from the smallest anecdote of how they listened to such-and-such album while reading the timeline of such-and-such historical occurence(s), or watched such-and-such film immediately after reading such-and-such verse from some odd text that purports to deal with the essential challenges of being human etc.**

You should avoid doing any actual writing while drunk. Actual writing means anything that is to be recorded permanently outside of your own records - anything that you cannot delete the morning after and be sure that no-one else read, or can prove they read. That would be mailing list responses, messageboard posts, emails/txtmsgs to friends, colleagues, spouses, children, pets, what have you.

I suggest as an (possibly highly productive) alternative that you take short notes on the essential ideas you have, and review them 2-3 days after the given episode of intoxication. That way you have enough insulation from said episode that you don't immediately dismiss all of it as horrific exposition of your inner imbecile, and you may have the opportunity to consider said ideas in a context bolstered by the more accurate calibration of senses, as well as your logical faculties.***

* I almost started a whole blog dedicated to my idea of "First of all, be neighbourly" and the idea of searching each others' bags on subway rides in the (late) wake of the London tube bombings. I have since clicked "delete this blog" so I suppose "well documented" is a push, in that instance.

** Transposition and subtitution, yaya shabooh shoobah, watching two films in a row and realizing they are both takeoffs of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus is not acceptable either.

*** NB, I am a bit tipsy at the mo.

These days, it's all about the coffee.

not quite creative writing but i cant write a job app at the moment without having a drink in the afternoon. i get too anxious. drinks the only thing that can calm my nerves. well unless someone can suggest something better.

F. Scott Fitzgerald sez - CLASSIC!

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:47 (4 years ago) Permalink

Hemingway said total classic too.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:52 (4 years ago) Permalink

Raymond Carver.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:53 (4 years ago)

Fitzgerald = drank himself to death at age 44
Hemingway = committed suicide
Carver = alcholic, died age 50

Guess it depends what you mean by "good"...