What Happens When You Try and Drink Like Hemingway
“Write drunk; edit sober.”
Ernest Hemingway, Nobel and Pulitzer-prize winning author of such classics as The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises, liked a drink or two.
I’m no stranger to drinking, either, But that’s where the similarities end. I haven’t seen war first-hand. I have never been to Europe. And I’ve never combined drinking and writing as he often did.
My writing time is spent pouring over a blank computer screen rather than a notebook, drinking coffee instead of wines, liquers, or cognac. Hemingway’s works stand timeless; mine… well, time will tell. But I have yet to find the same genius that he was able to summon.
Was it the drink? Did Hemingway offer this quote as an exercise? Challenge accepted, sir.
The Experiment
Disclaimer: we’re not encouraging the excessive consumption of alcohol. Eric knows his limit, didn’t have to work or lift anything heavy after his experiment, and even had the poison control number on standby. How’s that for responsible drinking!?
I’m about to embark on a journey, following in Hemingway’s footsteps for an evening. I have a case of beer (representing his days during World War I), a bottle of Chianti (which he enjoyed in Venice), some brandy (from his time in Paris), and my computer.
I welcome you to join me on this journey as I discover just what may come from a night of writing drunk. Bottoms up!
What follows is an unedited excerpt from my night of writing drunk:
I pushed the shovel into the dirt. The stench of death came to mind. The fear of what we would find – what I would unearth – rose within me. It was almost enough to make me retch.
I was as entombed as Jerry. All around my friends were laughing in a cloud of smoke and intoxication. I felt their haze become my grave. the further I dug, Jerry and I began to share his. Each stop for breath became a pause to gag, or puke; facing my mortality. Now, it was one more shovelful of newly moistened, dinner-filled soil.
“Hey, kid,” the old-man bellowed down the hole with a drinken laugh, “Catch!” I found his seated on a tombstone somewhat ironic.
I was tossed a sweaty, greezy hanky to wipe my brow. I didn’t know which was worse the bile churming in my gut, the prospect of where I was heading, or this disgusting rag. I tried not to glare at his generosity. I mopped my brow in hopes that the soil was steril enough to kill anything I may have just wiped across my face.
Despite digging toward hell I looked up to the heavens and marveled at the beauty of my surroundings. The moonlight made the old marble stones glow like polished mirrors the stars twinkled watching over me – perhaps judging, perhaps not; I hoped the latter cigarette smoke billowed up from glowing embers and the evil laughter of my undertakers disappeared into the crickets and cicadas in cool night air.
Three more feet down and we would find him. We would rescue his legacy and secure our future in my young naivety I secretly relished this opportunity, despite every bone in my body telling me that with each shovelful I was securing my fate.
Author’s note: Ok, so that’s as far as I got before the alcohol had me staring off into space. Not the best stuff I’ve ever written, oddly enough it wasn’t the worst. Certainly not the most inspired, but I’ve tried my hand at something new – walking in the footsteps of genius – and that, at least, is something.
The Aftermath
My head is still throbbing.
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.
And now, despite the headache, the editing begins to clean up my story. I want to keep its free spirit but give it shave and a shower to make it more presentable. This process would have to be done sober. I can only imagine, and I’m not about to try, what kind of disaster may come of this if I attempted to edit in my intoxicated state. I need a clear head to polish my writing. While the first draft can be crafted in the trenches of an altered state, the editing process takes a sharp mind.
In Conclusion
While I don’t recommend that you try this exercise yourself, I do see the value in Hemingway’s advice to, “write drunk; edit sober.” Keep a sharp eye on your revisions, but let yourself go into the creative process uninhibited. Write with unabashed honesty, and perhaps, greatness will be your reward.
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Have you ever wrote while drunk? How do you free your inhibitions when you write? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Images courtesy of JFK Library and Steve McNicholas.
Between his job as a video editor and his hobby as a digital creative, Eric Kuentz thrives on the continuous quest for self-improvement.
I can’t say I’ve enjoyed any success writing drunk, as I try to write every day and have too much fear of becoming a daily drinker. However, I will admit that my early experiences of drunkeness were very much a part of wanting to write, feeling my writing voice, and conceiving of writing’s rewards.
I can’t say this was “successful” writing either, but I did find it a good exercise just to try it out. I, too, would fear falling into the bottle if I tried this every time I sat down to write. While it was a good experience, I certainly won’t be making a habit out of it! Thanks, Aregee!
I tried this recently, I sat with a bottle of vodka in front of my Olivetti and if I’m honest I don’t think it helped me very much. I expected to gain a bit more from it so, I’m going to try a nice warm whiskey next! I think the rolled over ‘intoxication’ of a sleepy mind is much more effective for me…mornings are more for me.
When I write copy for clients, I’m dead sober. But when I write creatively, it let’s things loose, without a doubt.
I bet I could drink Hemingway under the table.
I read somewhere that Kerouac write On the Road hyped on a version of Adderall.
Indeed, the beats often mention Benzedrine in their work. To be honest I think that would explain some of his poetry.
It was certainly a good exercise in creativity, but certainly not something I would ever try with client work! Excellent points, Allena.
No way could you drink Hemingway under the table. There are a handful of people in the world who could drink Hemingway under the table, MAYBE.
I’m sure Bukowski could have haha!
I have to agree. I do get some pretty interesting ideas when I’m tired. That’s another good way to get the pen flowing.
If I may ask, what became of your Vodka/Olivetti experience?
It’s at the bottom of a pile on my desk. I’ll most likely rewrite it at some point!
I dug that piece out last night, in hindsight there are a few special moments in it that with a bit of reworking could be interesting.
Great, Paul! It can be quite the adventure to dig-up a pseudo-forgotten piece. Unrelated to this post, I recently dusted off a few notebooks of my own recently.
Best of luck if you choose to re-pursue this project!
Super post Eric! And you did indeed let loose while writing drunk, it shows. I absolutely love this line: “I felt their haze become my grave”. I agree, mind-altering substances, whether it be alcohol or…other drugs, does kind of push that little smart-alec editor into the corner.
I can’t drink now, because of the ridiculous number of medications I have to take to “maintain” my fibromyalgia, but I lovingly recall the time, in my early 20s, when I drank, (and yes, often a bit too much), and let the pen flow, flow, flow. The majority of the results were pitiful but I did often write lines that, when sober, had me thinking “Wow, maybe I actually can write!”
I may have to use this post as inspiration for one of my own…..
Thanks, Deanna. It was certainly an experience. I don’t know that I’ll be trying it again anytime soon, but it was definitely nice to see what came from writing under the influence. Good things can come from writing uninhibited, however we may choose to get there.
I’d love to see what comes from your inspiration!
Well, I wasn’t drunk when I wrote this one, but I was in one of those “let it go and let it flow” moods – Recurrence eventually became a poem, (which I rarely write, much less share), but it was originally….well, for lack of a better way to put it – a bunch of words strung together. Here is the link, on my fiction site, to Recurrence: http://theothersideofdeanna.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/recurrence-a-poem-amwriting/
I’m not so sure you’d want to see anything beyond this sort. :)
Lovely work, definitely flows! Thanks for sharing your work, Deanna!
My best stuff has been written in bed, fueled by waking-dreams. It’s even more productive if I’ve forgotten to take my SSRIs, but that’s not a price I will deliberately pay.
I can certainly relate, Kevin. Glad you’re being smart about it!
I actually do this to write essays, mainly because I can’t focus sober and get distracted very easily. Usually I actually enjoy talking about what it is I’m supposed to write about, but it gets very hard to actually put my nose to the grindstone and crank it out. When I get to a solid buzz, writing sounds like fun, and I finish my first draft in about a quarter of the time it normally takes me. I sleep it off, and edit the next day. I go to a private college where they actually read your writing, but to date the lowest grade I’ve gotten using this method was an A-.
It sounds like you’ve found something that works for you, Gretchen. Responsibily, I should caution you about the potential dangers of this method should you pursue writing professionally. I would hate to see you become addicted just to get in the habit of getting the work done.
May I recommend Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art” and Scott Belsky’s “Making Ideas Happen.” Both are about avoiding Resistance and getting down to business.
Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer is really helpful at finding focus, I’m half way thought it already and I’m already producing better work.
Don’t worry, I don’t do this on any kind of Hemingway scale, and I generally only use it as a last resort. I promise that I am undertaking this method responsibly; I know my limit. I am also not planning on writing professionally other than strictly academic reports that should never be undertaken drunk under any circumstances :) I’ll check out the titles you recommended though, I need the focusing help.
Thanks for the recommendation, Paul!
Glad to hear you are being smart about it, Gretchen.
Excellent Post, the outcome may have not been your best writing but certainly a highly creative piece nonetheless. I have to say alcohol gives me a new found clarity when writing, however, if it wasn’t bad enough while I was sober, my attention span becomes like a goldfish. Sorry that’s an insult to the goldfish.
LOL. Thanks, Jessica. I can relate to that short attention span while intoxicated. While it may lower the inhibitions, alcohol seems to be more of a hinderance than a help.
Posting a link to this. Fits well with my recent and inadvertent Hemingway theme!
Thank you for sharing the link!
Wouldn’t be taking advice from Hemingway. The content of his work speaks to this point.
One factor to consider in evaluating your experimentation is the theory of state-dependent learning. While I don’t know your history of inebriation, I suspect that characters like Hemingway experienced a far more significant and richer diversity of life while inebriated. Perhaps its better to experience while inebriated; to let the barriers fall and live fully in the moment and then later re-enter a similar but less intoxicated state while putting pen to paper.
An interesting point, MikeP. Reminiscent of a Hunter S. Thompson state-of-mind.
He who essays to write drinks whiskey to deaden the fright.
I´m a professional writer, and all I can say is “No”. Booze or drugs does NOT work in the long run. When I was young I was a semi-heavy drinker, but most of my writing took place outside of the alcohol, so to speak. And sooner or later the drinking makes your output shallow and somewhat lame. You try to be colorful but end up black and white. And let´s face it: Hemingway wrote his best works when he was fairly young, before the paranoia started to kick in.
Excellent points, LBJ! Thank you! (and I’d have to agree about Hemmingway)
While in college and teetering dangerously close to a deadline for an essay, I went to a bar and got fairly drunk with my dad – though not completely intoxicated – before attempting to start the piece. My dad’s advice at the time was ‘Write drunk, edit sober.’ Not being very widely read, I thought it was his own quote.
Having already collected a fairly wide range of reference material, I finished the essay in a few hours before going to bed. When I woke up, I edited the piece before heading in to college and handing it in – my hangover subduing any second thoughts I may have had about the quality of the work. Not that I had much choice in the matter – I wouldn’t have had time to rewrite it even if I had the motivation. It was the only time I wrote a piece drunk, and although it wasn’t the only A I got in college, it was definitely some of my best writing.
Admittedly it was an academic piece, so there was a fairly tight framework to work within. If you have a brief or an aim of some kind, then indulging in certain drugs can definitely help things along.
Let’s face it, some of the best creative work that humans have managed to produce has been enhanced by drugs. As long as you can harness it, and bend your will to channel the things that are coming out of your brain and squirt them onto the page or into the mic, you’re probably getting somewhere. It’s a fine line, but if you can avoid simply boozing (or smoking) for the sake of it, you might be on to something.
A very good example, blknkwhtpg.
Hemingway never wrote while drunk.
It’s interesting. I’ve never written drunk. I usually free my inhibitions before I write by doing absurd imaginings about how great the piece I will write will be. Then I write in-between conservative and outpouring. Throughout, I do editing. I wonder often whether I’m playing it safe. Then reality hits and I figure that nothing is safe anymore.
Mark Blasini