What Happens When You Follow Hemingway's Advice to "Write Drunk; Edit Sober"?
It may surprise you, but most Neatorama blogging is done while the authors are stone cold sober. Would our content selection and writing improve if we took a few shots of whiskey first? That would be in keeping with Earnest Hemingway's advice to "write drunk; edit sober." Well, the first part at least. Writer Eric Kuentz decided to try Hemingway's regimen. Here's his morning after report:My head is still throbbing.
One thing I learned, besides being out of practice drinking (no worries, not a habit I’m looking to pick up), alcohol definitely lowered my inhibitions. While this can be a dangerous occurrence at the bar, facing the blank page wasn’t nearly as scary as usual. While the ideas didn’t flow as smoothly as I may have liked, and clearly I lose the ability to punctuate and spell, there was definitely a stream-of-consciousness kind of feeling as I was writing. As things popped into my head, as characters spoke out of the fog of intoxication, it all spewed out onto the page.
Link -via VA Viper | Photo: Thomas Nelson & Sons
There is, on page 174 of "A Moveable Feast" this;
"My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I write nor while I was writing." -- Hemingway.
Especially if you have a bunch of water, coffee, and more alcohol around to sustain that level for awhile.
-Another thing writers like is Absinthe. Especially for its 'Push-Pull' effect.
-Which is in-place due to the alcohol for the pull and a few of the other non-wormwood herbs (like Hyssop & Melissa, iirc) for the push part. -Sort of like a very fancy Irish Coffee.
No you don't trip on Absinthe; you'd die of alcohol poisoning first. That's part of the copper-salt-bathtub-absinthe that cheapo bucket shops made for poor folks back Circa ~Toulouse-Lautrec.
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+I get a lot of the best creative & funny stuff when I've had only 4 hours sleep.