I'm a writer currently living in Las Vegas, loathing the city and drinking away the days, trying to escape the madness. Check out DrewBlanche.com for more info.
Hemingway’s Writing Advice!
I was hesitant to calling this “Hemingway’s Drinking Advice!”
A long while ago, maybe 3-4 years back I picked up a copy of Hemingway’s On Writing and it made me realize the most important things that a writer must follow in order to be a successful writer. Basically for most, we must follow a simple set of rules. Looking back on the book, it gave a lot of tips on how to finish a novel, not to over write and the one thing that I see clear now is probably something that most people wouldn’t even consider.
Hemingway said, that he never drank before or during a writing session. I myself have been waking up to a cocktail or finishing off a beer from the previous night to start my mornings, and I was of course drinking during all my writing sessions while working on my latest novel, The Strip. Though, after being sober for 2 days for the first time since I lived at Hooters I see this advice or rather this personal enigma being true. You just can’t focus with booze in your system, and you can’t write more than 30 minutes without wanting to take another drink and calling it a day.
Very little writing has been done when I am drinking, and I look back on my other books how I wrote 10 hours a day and got so much writing done—realizing I was sober. You can’t be drunk and write, it’s when you sober up do you get any real writing done.
So if you have to drink, drink afterwards. It will be your reward for actually writing something. Because let’s face it, Hemingway drank up to a quart of whiskey a day, he didn’t drink less with this system, he just drank after the writing session was over and he was known to only write an average of 500 words a day. That is a lot lower than my standard of 5k a day, every day.
Good luck!
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
