Write Drunk; Edit Sober

Write drunk; edit sober. These words are, somewhat apocryphally, attributed to the twentieth-century American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was known for swigging back the odd mojito or two. But Hemingway drank in the evening, thus it is more likely that he ‘wrote hungover’ and probably ‘edited hungover’ — far less catchy. I prefer the quotation “modern life […] is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief,” which, unlike the former quotation, we know Hemingway wrote in a letter. So, does drinking enhance creativity? Should we, as university students and artists, be inspired to do what Hemingway and many other clearly successful authors did?

In his composition of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci,’ Keats wrote under the influence of opium. When Keats took a swig of laudanum, he wasn’t just trying to “keep up his spirits” (as his close friend Charles Brown claimed) but also attempting to alleviate the symptoms of his chronically sore throat. Keats wasn’t the only poet to have drug-induced dreams, as, famously, Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ appeared to him as “a vision in a dream. A Fragment.” Thomas de Quincey similarly published his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which explores both the Pains and Pleasures of Opium (as two of the sections are respectively called). De Quincey writes that, after taking the drug, he “sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night.” I sometimes feel I could do with an extra 70 years when I’m trying to turn in my English essay minutes before the deadline. Famously, De Quincey writes of “the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel.” So, drug-taking whilst writing is a form of temptation and rebellion. And the Romantics loved a bit of rebellion, that’s for sure.

Further back in time, in ancient Greece, poems were recited at symposia (or drinking parties), and poets would write specific songs about drinking, known as Anacreontic poetry. Anacreon writes, “τί μοι μάχεσθ᾿, ἑταῖροι,/ καὐτῷ θέλοντι πίνειν;” (Friend, spare the diatribe/ if I also imbibe). Feel free to use that when a friend is nagging you after you’ve had one too many drinks. Try it in Greek first, then, if that doesn’t work, in English.

In third-century China, too, the seven sages of the Bamboo Grove consumed wine to compose their poetry. Writing drunk allows a certain carefree application of words to paper, a loosening of the tight grip on language. As Charles Bukowski puts it, “It yanks or joggles you out of routine thought and everydayism.” The bibulous imperfections are often only grammatical or syntactical and can simply be amended during the sober process (in both senses) of editing.

However, this oenophilia had a darker side. Drinking was one of the things that killed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas when he was just 39. F. Scott Fitzgerald, too, died young at 44, and Hemingway’s drinking was part of his depression that led to his tragic suicide. Drink and drugs led Stephen King, the King of Horror, to write the entire novel Cujo during a weekend binge, afterwards having no recollection of it ever having been written.

So, in conclusion, you probably shouldn’t write drunk and edit sober. The writers who did seemed to be fighting their internal demons, in some cases unsuccessfully. Writing tipsily, however, is perhaps more excusable. On that note, I will put down my pen and, with it, my fifth glass of wine.

Illustration by Sandra Palazuelos Garcia