Introducing a new category!
Writing Show and Tell.
Have you ever written something drunk? And no, I’m not talking about tipsy texting your ex after one too many margaritas, though those stories are fun too.
It seems like a ridiculous idea, but you’d be shocked how many people I knew in law school who swore by doing their legal writing assignments drunk, or at least buzzed. At first I thought it was to dull the pain of legal writing (trust me, as a first year law student, there was nothing more dreaded or painful than those damn papers) but they said no (or at least not only) it was because the drinking helped loosen up their minds so they could write.
This got me thinking. How many famous writers were or are drunks? How many used the lubricant of alcohol to slip out of this reality into their own? How many found their ideas and voices when they were getting shit faced?
What is it about us that keeps us from having that freedom, that filter-less flow that comes from alcohol?
Come on, we all know what alcohol does.
Lowers inhibitions!
Now, my problem with trying this is my brain doesn’t work with alcohol… at all. I like alcohol, a nice sugary lemon drop or mojito does wonders for my spirits (pun intended!) after a long day, and a good glass of wine is a good glass of wine, but I’m a cheap drunk, and a fairly useless one. If I’m drinking, it’s because I don’t need my brain for a few hours.
So how do you get yourself into that mindset of lowered inhibitions without lowered mental acuity?
I don’t know if this works for everybody, but for me, walking! If I’m stuck or just not feeling it, walking around seems to get the juices flowing. I just walk, feel the sun on my face (not today, stupid rain) and let my mind wander. That’s where I got ideas as a kid, long before I started writing. I had about a twenty to thirty minute walk home from school and I’d get bored if I was alone, so I entertained myself.
I’ve started walking during my lunch hour. I only need about fifteen or twenty minutes to eat, so the rest of the time, I walk. I read while I do and then when my mind tries to take the story in a different direction or insert itself into it, I let it. This doesn’t necessarily translate to being in the mood to write when I get home after work, but the ideas are there and still fresh. Also, since this seems to be working, I’m trying to talk myself into walking the hour after work. I haven’t drummed up the will power to do that quite yet, but we’ll see.
To go off on a little tangent, I’m not writing drunk right now, but I am writing tired. I’ve gotten maybe four hours of sleep the past two nights and I may as well be drunk for all the sharpness my mind has right now. But I’m writing, okay babbling, so it is possible.
So, open forum here. Have you ever written drunk? Even if it was just a regretted the morning after text to an ex? When you read it in the light of day, was it any good? Was it the ranting of a crazy, half drowned mind? Was it so embarrassingly horrible you deleted it right then and there? Or, post here whatever you wrote while you were drunk and let us decide.
Inquiring minds want to know. And by that I mean me, because I’m nosy like that 😉
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