/lit/ - Literature

>>4496092
Self bump with quotes form the web about the subject

Writing and drinking: The writer with a drinking problem is a story told often enough that the trait has become cliché. But since a new book devotes 340 pages to the topic, there must be something to it. Olivia Laing wrote “The Trip to Echo Spring” about six famous writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Cheever, and stories about the vice that they shared. No doubt tales of drunkenness about famous and brilliant people can make good reading. More important though, are accomplished, full-time storytellers more prone to alcoholism (or drug abuse)? This review from The New York Times suggests Laing may be examining that more than the writers themselves:

“I was beginning to think,” Laing writes, “that drinking might be a way of disappearing from the world.” It’s a beautiful sentence and it hints at the torment she is trying to locate.

>>4496092
>hemingway.jpg

Yeah use the author who didn't write anything worth reading during his real alcoholic kicks.

No, it's complete bullshit.

>>4496092

People drink and get high so they don't feel responsible for their bad writing.

Seriously, something I've noticed as I get older is that there's a point where people stop getting high for fun and start getting high so they have an excuse to complain about things unacceptable for an adult to complain about.

Example: You get drunk with your buddies one night. You confess to them how your recent breakup was actually much more painful than you let on. Maybe you even text your ex. Normally you don't talk about how you feel or let on weaknesses like that, but the next day you're excuse is that you were drunk.

People write under the influence because they're otherwise unable to write at all for fear of writing something bad, and when they're high that's enough of an excuse that if they see what they wrote doesn't live up to their sober standards they can say "oh well I was drunk that doesn't represent my true abilities" and if they like it they can take credit for it. It's really an unhealthy habit, you just need to get over yourself and accept that you're writing is going to be shit for a while.

>>4496121
Except he never wrote while drunk despite the quote which is often mistaken as Hemingway's.

>>4496092

>frees the imagination from this shitty world

You are a hack with the maturity of a child. You will never produce anything worth the toilet paper the average asshole tears up.

>>4496126

Fuck, I used "you're" instead of "your" twice. How did this happen

I was drunk it's not my fault

I didn't used to believe that alcohol and writing went well together, but the last time I drank alone I started to write and got really interesting results that I probably couldn't have achieved while sober.

On the other hand, I get AWFUL short term memory while drunk. If I lose my train of thought, I'll never get it back.

>>4496126
Okay but what if you can only write your "true feels" when drunk or high? Get the main point hammered out in the dark with a bottle of Jack beside you. Then edit sober, I think your true self comes out on drugs or booze and that is where you want to be when writing.

>>4496134
And what have you accomplished in your life dude?
>Always gotta be a player hater up in hurr.

My best writing is done in that weird faded state of mind when you're coming off a high but your mind is still doing that shifting thing. Shifting focus, obscurity, gloom almost. Makes my particular style work.

>>4496139
But that implies true feelings make for the best writing. Maybe writing from a self-conscious perspective is more interesting (Tao Lin). Not saying he doesn't do shitloads of drugs, but writing with inhibitions and self-consciousness sometimes makes for a better representation of the era, as we are now in a period defined by self-awareness.

>>4496139

That's fair, as drugs (I'm including alcohol with drugs because it fucking is why do we distinguish) definitely have the potential to let you see things from a different perspective.

But I'm personally far less creative when high, so I'll write and edit sober and eat pizza and watch Futurama when I get high.

I am sorry for anyone who's art is significantly improved by them being high, that's a shitty position to be in.

more like writers and addiction, why do they go hand in hand

>>4496139
Your "true self" comes out when you spend years of practice on how to put that into writing. People need to get the idea that there is a secret or shortcut to writing out of their heads. There isn't.

I'm more creative when high, so I like to write while high. Ideas and connections that I could never have thought up or made come out. It also helps that even the most mundane thing seems brilliant, so I like to even as little as jot ideas down to write about later while stoned.

As far as full out writing? Not so much. Normally what happens is that I'll get a spark and for whatever that spark lit I will be on fire, but that fire *will not* spread to anything else, so the next morning I've got one thing I'm proud of next to a whole stack of disappointment, and I'm fine with that.

Drinking doesn't work for me. Drinking facilitates a more freeflow environment which is not what I want to go for. I'm more articulate high anyway, so there are really no upsides besides the fact that it's a different experience, in essence allowing myself to have 3 separate sets of "eyes" with which to view my work. I review it under each circumstance, and once it's made its full round I find that I've made something which I believe to be decent.

So, like, just do whatever you feel like, man

>>4496161
I agree with that. Practice and form are always better than drunk and looney.
>But we all love the looney's

What the fuck is Papa doing sitting down?

Early during high school, when I first fell in love with writing, I smoked marijuana nearly everyday.
Early during college, when I developed my own voice and toyed with style, I inherited my dad's alcoholism.

Baaah. Whateves I am drunk meow so time to type some shit!

>>4496289
it's in quotations must be cool and true

I like drinking. I don't think it has anything to do with writing, really. I just like booze.

>>4496304
>captcha is hard when drunk 4th attempt go!

Getting high on weed doesn't help me at all. It fucks me up so hard, everything is spinning and I can't connect my toughts, not write a thing.
Alcohol only makes me sleepy.

But MDPV makes me write like fucking Tolkien. It's mostly shit, but still.

>>4496304
"i'm cool"

"i've had sex and am a cool guy"

>tfw alcohol allergy


I'll never be famous ;_;

>>4496345
I thought everyone had alcohol allergy.

>>4496345
not with that attitude you won't

fight against your weaknesses son, becoming a part of literary canon is still in your reach

>>4496336

>>4496350
After one drink I break out in hives and shortness of breath.

>>4496369
I'll become a hideous red itchy mess for immortality.

>>4496386
That sucks dude, I legit feels bad for you. Getting drunk is a great feeling. /in moderation/

>>4496390
drink and drive responsibly

>>4496390
Haha no need to pity me, I mean, I can get other vices right?

>>4496420
>nick cave
you're cool

Saying this from half way down a bottle of wine: they're hand in hand but it's just for an escape, and being drunk does not make you more creative. Writers seek alcohol to dull their senses because they spend so much time in their own heads, the same way people in back-breaking blue collar work go home and drink to forget their miseries.

>>4496559
Actually I can't defend that statement. Drinking is stupid and a poor choice, guys.

>>4496420
Are you sure that it isn't a hops allergy? Maybe liquor won't effect you the same way.

>>4496559
Drinking gives makes you feel creative, gives you flow, by uninhibiting you, it doesn't make you creative. The sensation, flow, is an important component of the feeling of creation, what great artists crave, otherwise why would they devote so many hard hours to their compositions?

>>4496581
Part of the problem, I should have added, is that it uninhibits you while simultaneously and seriously damaging your cognitive abilities.

Stimulants, do a similar thing, but they don't damage how you write. Authors are notorious coffee drinkers.

>>4496092
learn to meditate

>>4496581
That's why I feel like knocking out a chapter like nothing after a drink, and end up here after five...