“Write Drunk, Edit Sober”

This is one of my favorite quotes, attributed to Ernest Hemingway. Think about it – what great story starts with, “So I was having a salad…”? Nearly everyone has spent a night imbibing in potent potables, spent the night laughing or crying or fighting, then regretted it the next day. You see, we gain a certain amount of “liquid courage” or honesty when we drink. This comes out by channeling our unreserved self. We become who we are without the prefrontal cortex making the smart decision for us. We say and do what our instincts tell us. But the next morning can be rough. As our brain becomes fully functioning again, we realize…well, in the words of the Guardian of the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we “chose poorly.” Yet most people who thrive in the art world become victims of alcohol and drug abuse and addiction – Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, and Hunter S. Thompson, to name a few. This is partially due to the way their brain functions – constantly and insatiably creating to the point of needing to just shut it off, but also due to the creative process. They can throw the social norms out the window and express their true feelings. They can let their brains out of the box and roam freely to a world that only exists in their imagination.

But the next morning you must edit. You must make amends for the unbridled creativity of the night before. You must decide where the brutal honesty is called for and where it must be softened. You must decide how real you want your characters to be and how well-liked they need to be. But one thing you DON’T have to do – edit for grammar, punctuation, and the like. Get yourself a good editor. Ah, see what I did there?

But in all honesty, don’t just write drunk. Live life a little drunk – at least figuratively. I’m not encouraging chemical dependency, but rather learn to relax, not take everything so seriously, not get so caught up in schedules and lists. Play with your kids, craft, create new rules to an old game, think without worrying about the “can’t” and “won’t” aspects of it. So many great inventions were created because of mistakes - Post-its, penicillin, chocolate lava cakes, Silly Putty. You don’t know until you try, until you get creative, until you stop worrying about failure. In the words of Mark Twain, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines! Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.”