Always write under the influence

https://medium.com/writers-on-writing/1f6bcb600140

by dsowers • 13 years ago

10 5 13 years ago

clarkm• 13 years ago

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to balance sentiments like this with the fact that there's no real way to retract anything on the internet. The submit button might as well read "set in stone" or "permanently etch into your life history". Once you hit it and let the content sit, it will be scraped up by google, archive.org, the NSA, and god knows who else. And you can't take it back.

But it's fun reading edgy, not-so-sober content. It's fun writing it too. Though since everything is permanent, the line of acceptability is different. You can't make private, off the cuff remarks online without adding them to your permanent record. So wherever the line is, you really don't want to cross it. I guess there's a Ballmer Peak for everything.

fragsworth• 13 years ago

Maybe write it while you're drugged, and edit it while you're sober.

mbrock• 13 years ago

Or learn to unsober without chemicals!

justinator• 13 years ago

Writing boozed up is one very valid way of writing. But, it's not the only way.

For someone to be so persistent at the former opinion is simply because it's a sensational stance, and for some reason that makes the author feel more interesting, and HN seems to love this sort of sensationalism. The pattern is this: take a simplified viewpoint and extrapolate on it.

If you need a drug to perform at your best, it's called a dependency. A crutch. If you're weak at something, don't mask it, work towards making yourself stronger, not just allowing yourself to think you're stronger. Lots of people under lots of different chemicals, think what they're doing is incredible, but only when they're still under the influence. If you need something to loosen up to start, fine - I encourage you to figure out how to attain that loosening without the drug. Save you some money, too.

I love me some drug-addled writers: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Hemingway (as the author also shares), Kesey, Irvine Welsh, Genet. The list is long. What these figures have in common is not that they all did incredible amounts of drugs, what they have in common is they all had a strong desire to write. To work hard. You can be an addict and work hard - the two are not mutually exclusive, but they're also not dependent on one-another.

Hemingway is such a weird example - Kerouac was also drunk most of the time, and the guy couldn't finish a sentence. Is one style better than the other? Well, no - it's art baby, trying to critique it isn't as easy as you're writing portends it to be. "Booze made Hemingway get to the point", is a fine hypothesis - and maybe you're right, but it could make someone else forget where the period is located on their keyboard. Maybe writing in a war zone made Hemingway want to get to the point. Maybe that same thing made him want to drink.

You know who else were good writers? Thoreau. Emerson. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Pick your own list, from your own bookshelf. Even with your half-dozen published books: Mr Sowers, you are no Emerson. Imitation Is Suicide.

keithpeter• 13 years ago

The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer by Tom Dardis. Recommended reading for those who agree with the original author.

We should remember that Bukowski and Dr Thompson, both of whom boast of writing under the influence, had editors, and published for money, which implies a publisher taking legal consequences. Dr Thompson has pointed out that a lot of his reported consumption was fictional [1]. Bukowski liked to shock [2].

[1] http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/619/the-art-of-jour...

[2] http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/03/14/050314crbo_books

It is also worth pointing out that both of my examples walked the walk in a way that perhaps bloggers who write computer programs may be advised to avoid.

Always write under the influence

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