A Guide to Writing Drunk

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“I was drinking a case of 16-ounce tallboys a night, and there’s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.”

On Writing, Stephen King

One of the persistent stereotypes about writers is their fraught relationship with alcohol. For some, it’s absolutely accurate. But for most of us who write, we know it isn’t true. While there may be plenty of creatives who struggle with sobriety, it’s no greater in percentage terms than members of the general public experience. Still, why let that get in the way of giving it go?

Stephen King is the cautionary tale but what he did was alcoholic writing. Drunk writing is less intense, less destructive to life in general and a much more rare occurrence.

My first (and only) episode of drunk writing (to date) happened coincidentally. I’d just finished another long week at my non-writing job, I was about to start yet another Project October (a month of intensive writing – 31,000 words in 31 days), but before that I wanted to wind down on a Friday night with a couple of cold beverages while watching the football on television.

I’m not much of a drinker. If I want something alcoholic, I have to specifically go out and buy it as I don’t keep spares in the house just in case I feel like drinkies. And I usually can’t get through more than three drinks before getting tired and falling asleep. I was about half way through my second drink when I wrote in big wonky capital letters on one of my whiteboards, “DRUNK WRITING.”

I was going to leave it at that. Great idea, my tipsy self thought. I’d follow it up in the morning after a good sleep when I was refreshed and ready to write. The problem is that nowadays with that full-time non-writing job I mentioned, more often than not when I put off writing until I am refreshed and ready, the writing never gets done.

So I kept making notes. I wrote – sometimes clearly, sometimes illegibly – on my whiteboard. Then I would retreat to the couch, take another swig of my preferred Smirnoff Double Black, rest the bottle in my lap, have a cat jump on me and spill the liquid over both of us, clean it up and wait for the next wave of inspiration.

This piece of writing is the result.

“But it doesn’t read like something written by a drunk person,” I hope with fingers crossed you are thinking to yourself. Of course not. I don’t – and nobody should – publish first drafts even when they’re written sober, let alone drunk.

If you’d like to give it a go, here are a few tips.

Step 1: Choose your moment

I recommend a Friday or Saturday night. Getting drunk during the day, no matter how productive you intend to be, isn’t a great look, more pitiable than experimental. Plus, the daytime commitments that many of us have (children, jobs, etc) don’t mix well with drinking.

Step 2: Get nicely drunk

Not so drunk that you pass out, not so drunk that you vomit on your keyboard (it’s counterintuitive if you have to spend your drunk writing time cleaning stomach bile and undigested food off and out of your computer, even more so if you do so much damage to your hardware that you need to purchase a new machine).

Step 3: Embrace weird ideas

Just go with them. After all, if you wanted to be sensible, you wouldn’t be trying this drunk writing thing in the first place. The weird ideas might not make sense in the morning but in these inebriated moments, they will be wonderful. And you never know how they might just evolve into terrific plots. A fight-to-the-death reality television show with child contestants probably sounded a little insane to begin with but now it’s difficult to imagine a world in which The Hunger Games books don’t exist.

Step 4: Ignore the rules

Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, chapters or generally making sense. Drunk writing is more of a stream of consciousness type of writing. The only thing you should expect of yourself is to get words down on a page (or a whiteboard or a napkin or whatever it is you have to hand). All of the things that need to be fixed to make it understandable for the sober reader can be left for the sober editor. (The sober editor will probably be you as well, just you the next day after the effects of the alcohol have worn off.)

Step 5: Don’t overdo it

The reason that drunk writing is appealing is because it’s something done rarely. If you’re drunk writing all the time, then you’re not drunk writing anymore, you’re just an alcoholic and while it worked okay for Stephen King in the short-term, it doesn’t do you (or any of your loved ones) any favours over the longer course of your writing (or general) life.

*****

So that’s drunk writing. I got this article out of it. But I’m not planning to do any more drunk writing for a while. Firstly, it’s incompatible with that Project October I mentioned above, which really requires focus and not falling asleep. Secondly, trying to edit 31,000 words of drunk writing doesn’t sound all that appealing to my sober editor (me). Thirdly, for every episode of drunk writing that requires three drinks, I could be spending that money on a book (and if you know me at all, you know I’d much rather be spending my money on books). And lastly, if I spent a month drinking, my medical bills would also likely skyrocket. (And since I’m doing this Project October in July – yes, that’s Dry July – it wouldn’t seem quite right.)

If drunk writing isn’t quite up your alley (after all, it is essentially getting drunk alone), then a nice social alternative is the drunk reading group. How does it work? I’ll get back to you once I’ve been to one.