Write Drunk . . .

There is a fun article and even more fun comments regarding the article in Fuel Your Writing by Eric Kuentz entitled What Happens When You Try and Drink Like Hemingway (here). It's short and a worthwhile read and it has inspired me to try the same experiment to see what happens. Basically, the author took a bottle of wine and another aperitif and tried to write for the evening drunk. His results?



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.


Going back and looking what I have written in my intoxicated state, I think this may have been what Hemingway meant by “write drunk; edit sober.” My first draft is fluid and uninhibited. It’s haggard and sloppy, but it’s free. I had no fears and no restraints. Nothing was held back, and I wasn’t able to second-guess myself.

Again, it might be interesting to try. the question is . . . would it be worth the hangover?