July 09, 2007

Writing is Hell

Excerpt from:

WRITING IS HELL: A Guide Book to Save you from Utter Madness
by Chris Genoa

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
On the Vital Importance of Beverage Choice

When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.
~William Faulkner

Whatever you do, always remember this, the Third Golden Rule of Writing:

Never ever sit down to write without some sort of beverage close at hand.

Sitting down to write without something to drink is just asking for an excuse to procrastinate. The logic behind this is the same as that behind the First Golden Rule of Writing (covered in Chapter Sixty-Nine): Never ever sit down to write without having had sex and/or masturbated within the past 12-24 hours.

Without a drink at your side, you'll get no more than five minutes into writing when you'll look up from the screen and think, "Hey, I'm kind of thirsty. I can't write when I'm thirsty. That's just asking too much of a man. I mean, I'm practically dying of thirst over here! This is madness! This is TORTURE! Kill me! JUST KILL ME!"

Eventually you'll get up to get something to drink. Chances are it'll be coffee because someone once told you that that's what writers are supposed to drink. Hot black coffee. So you'll either go out to get some coffee, or you'll make some coffee at home. Either way it'll take you anywhere between one and four hours to get back to writing.

To avoid this, always prepare your beverage BEFORE you start a writing session. In the mornings the best thing to drink is this:

A pot of tea. Here's why:

1. It's a whole damn pot. So you won't run out of liquid anytime soon.

2. It's caffeinated, but not too caffeinated. So you won't nod off while trying to write that boring restaurant love scene you've been working on for three weeks. You also won't start vacuuming your walls to get rid some of that nervous energy that too much coffee can lead to.

3. It's super cheap. You're a writer. You're poor. Act like it.

4. It tastes pretty good. So it will keep the 10,000 or so taste buds on your tongue occupied while you try to concentrate.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that you're a bad ass like Bukowski or Hemingway and that drinking tea is all prissy and gay. Well, Mr. Hot Shit Tough Guy, does THIS look gay to you?

Don't answer that. Just drink the fucking tea and get over yourself.

The tea principle holds true from sunrise until about 7pm. After that, when the sun starts to set, tea is replaced by alcohol as the premier beverage of choice for writers. Here's why:

1. Alcohol is a potent depressant. It sends alpha brain waves rolling across your brain, and this in turn relaxes you after a long day of getting absolutely no work done. It lets you forgot that you just wasted an entire day (drinking coffee, masturbating, watching TV, checking email, blogging about the writing process...), and thus allows you to finally get down to the serious business of writing a whopping two hundred words in one day.

2. It lowers your inhibitions and allows you to do (and write) things you'd never do (or write) while sober. However, it is also true that many of these things are things that one should never ever do (or write), such as piss in your closet (or write literary fiction). So be careful. Never lose your sense of judgment.

3. Alcohol is also a stimulant. At low concentrations, alcohol stimulates certain areas of the brain. It sensitizes the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) system of the brain, making it more receptive to the neurotransmitter glutamate. Stimulated areas include the cortex, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens, which are responsible for thinking and pleasure seeking. What does this mean for the writer? It help you forgot how pathetic your life is and allows you to keep on writing that brilliant novel of yours.

Now, this isn't to say that you should start drinking whiskey while you write. If you do that, after a couple drinks you'll be so drunk that all of the above benefits are nullified by the blurred vision, profound confusion, and strong desire to tell people how much you love them.

The key is to find something with a fairly low alcohol content. Something like...

Beer! Beer is the perfect evening/late night writing beverage. It's cold, it's crisp, it's delicious, it's cheap, it's relatively low in alcohol content, and it keeps you in touch with the common man (unlike wine, which will only lead you down the aforementioned and dreaded "literary fiction" path, which is a path filled with nothing but pain, sorrow, and temp jobs).

Just steer clear of the super strong Belgium ales and whatnot. While they are delicious, due to their high ABV, they should be saved for post-writing shenanigans.

Whether it's tea or beer, always remember to drink slowly and savor each sip. Drinking fast will only lead to more interruptions, such as the need to go out and buy more tea/beer, frequent trips to the bathroom, and blind drunkenness.

As with the novel writing process itself, always pace yourself while drinking. Authors are turtles. Slow and steady wins the race.

Of course, in the writing profession, there are no real winners. There are just two kinds of people:

1. Those poor bastards who go through life racked with too much self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-touching to ever be happy.

2. Those lucky bastards who make a decent living with their writing... but who are also racked with too much self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-touching to ever be happy.

If you follow each and every one of my Golden Rules then maybe, just maybe, you'll be one of the lucky latter ones!

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