Write Drunk. Edit Sober.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.
Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953) (quotationspage.com)

Dylan Thomas having a beer.

Alcohol has long held a (honorable?) place in literary culture. Sometimes it takes over. The early deaths of Truman Capote, Dylan Thomas, and many other writers can attest to that. But if you are one who can drink in moderation, go for it. Pour yourself a double and get to work on that novel, short story, essay, or poem.

Alcohol is a social lubricant for me. When I drink, I talk and talk and talk. When I drink around paper, my pen does the talking. A couple glasses of Scotch (neat, please, Mr. Bartender) or a Gin Martini (Beefeater, dry) has helped me through a few blocks.

The greatest risk when drinking while writing, for me at least, is that I lose exactness. My ideas flow as freely as the booze, but my specifics falter. I make careless grammatical errors. I present ideas out of order. I ramble.

That’s why it’s important to edit sober. Take out that draft the next day, if you aren’t too hungover, and comb through it. After you correct the mechanics, you may well have a fine draft. This is simple advice really, but I know several writers who indulge in writing drunk then fail to sober up for the editing process.

Here’s to the brewers and distillers and to good writing! Cheers!

Perspective–Writing in First-Person

Writing in first-person is about more than just saying ‘I’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she.’ Seeing a story or poem through a particular character’s eyes both conveys the story itself and tells us a lot about the character. We connect with first-person narratives because they, when written well, are so “real” and personal, but first-person is difficult to write convincingly.

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is one of the best first-person narratives. Salinger does a remarkable job of maintaining Holden Caulfield’s voice throughout the novel. This is the biggest trap about writing in this perspective. It’s easy to let the character’s voice merge with the author’s voice. Even if the character is similar to the author, the character is a character and should consistently speak from his/her own perspective. Salinger’s ability to stay in the character allows the novel to become what it is, an exploration of the character, not just a recounting of events in the character’s life.

Some argue that Salinger had such ease with Caulfield because they were similar, but often our character needs to be someone quite different than our selves. I wrote a story a couple years ago from the point of view of a factory worker. I’ve never worked in a factory. I concentrated on my observations of my dad and his friends, many of whom have worked in that environment all their lives. My character had things to say about work ethic, unions, trade policy, and other issues that I can only talk about theoretically. Unfortunately, I did let my character sometimes sound more like an English major than blue collar man.

One novel that makes this mistake of the author’s voice co-opting the character’s is C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. Many of Lewis’ works are remarkable, and the mistakes he makes in this novel show how difficult writing first-person can be. His protagonist is Orual, a Greek princess, but the voice he uses is never convincingly feminine; it’s his overtly masculine voice poorly masked with female pronouns and experiences.

Another problem with Lewis’ novel that occurs in a lot of first-person writing is that the narration and descriptions sound like the descriptions of a narrator, not a character’s perception. Sure, there are reactions from the character to what is happening, but the format of “this is what happened; this is what I think about it” doesn’t work well in this case.

Another great first-person work is Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry which shows us how a (potentially) dishonest narrator can develop a story. The novel is set during the Irish Revolution and is told by Henry, a grandiose, self-deceived character who makes himself out to have nearly super-human strength. Though the context is the Irish Revolution, the real topic is self-formed mythology. Henry develops a mythology about who he is and also a mythology about what it is to be Irish in a post-colonial context.

What we learn from these books is that the most important aspect of first-person writing is consistency. We must remain consistent to the character we’ve created. Everything else is just writing.

Snow Day

We have about a foot of snow in Tulsa, and it’s still coming down. My office is closed. My evening class is cancelled. I guess I have what people call “free time.” So far the day has been full of family time. I got to sleep in until almost 8am, then laid on the couch with Carolyn while the girls watched PBS kid shows. After that, gluten-free banana oatmeal muffins were enjoyed by all. The recipe is right here. Today’s the sort of day that calls for breakfast to have a dessert, so we ate some snow ice cream.

Escapist music is spinning on the turntable. I’m not sure if that makes cabin fever worse or better. Right now it’s Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album, and I’m leaning toward Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” next.

Lunch is cooking. After that, I’ll be able to focus on some serious writing while the girls nap. Hopefully they nap. We can’t really do the car nap thing as back up today… I have ideas for a short story, a few blog posts, and maybe even a poem. Here’s to snow days as writing days. *raises mug of hot chocolate* Cheers.

Feeling the Beat: Music and Poetry

Sometimes to my wife’s chagrin, I have eclectic taste in music. She rolls her eyes when I listen to country or rap music… As a poet, I feel this wide range of music is beneficial to my writing because music and poetry are closely related artistic expressions. Listening to different styles of music helps me get a better feel for how to use rhythm in my writing.

Rhythm is important, not just as a requirement for a collection of words to be called poetry, but as a tool in that poetry. The rhythm controls the pace, the emotion, the sound, the feel of a poem.

Though I read and listen to a lot of poetry, sometimes it helps me to listen to the more obvious beats of music. The train of Johnny Cash trudging by Folsom Prison. The slow, drawn out emotion of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The upbeat (in tempo and emotion) sounds of the Black Eyed Peas.

Songs that employ changing rhythms are particularly interesting. Sometimes rhythm changes as emotion or content changes, and mastering this is good for poetry. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and “Load Out” by Jackson Browne are good examples.

All of this music derives meaning through both rhythm and content. Just like poetry.

p.s. My wife’s blog is right here. She posts amazing vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free recipes.

Writing: Equipment Matters

In addition to writing great poetry, mediocre prose, and clever essays, I play tennis. Skill is the most important need when playing the sport, of course, and this is built through a combination of natural talent and practice, but equipment is also important. Different playing styles benefit from different types of racquets and different types of and tensions of strings. I’m an all court player, which means I use a mix of groundstrokes from the baseline and serving and volleying. I was formerly more of a serve and volleyer, but more or less shredding the cartilage in my knees has made that style more difficult. I digress. My playing style requires a racquet that has good touch and doesn’t necessarily produce a lot of power (I do well enough at knocking the hell out of the ball), so I prefer the Prince Precision series of racquets, and I use synthetic gut strings (real cat gut strings don’t fit my vegetarian ethics very well) to enhance my feel of the ball further.

As vain as it sounds, the right equipment is important for writing, too. I cannot convince my mind to write a decent first draft on a computer (with the exceptions of academic essays and blog posts). When I write poetry, I have to write it out by hand, then I type it into my computer for editing and storage. For prose, I prefer a typewriter. Imagine your cliché image of an author with long beard, cigarettes, small desk, manual typewriter, and so on; that’s me, though my beard isn’t too long, yet and only contains a few grey hairs.

I carry a (vinyl-covered) Moleskin notebook with me everywhere I go for writing poetry and jotting down notes for other writing projects. It’s a perfect fit for me. It slides right into my coat pocket or rear jeans pocket. I also carry a black Pilot G2 ink pen because I like both the feel of writing with it and the look of the words on the page. Portability is essential. If I get an idea or have a moment of inspiration, I can take out my notebook and immediately write down my thoughts.

My four typewriters usually stay at home. I have a manual black Royal typewriter (1920s?), a faded lime green Olympia portable manual typewriter (1950s?), an Underwood early electric typewriter (1960s?) that’s enormous and doesn’t fully functions, and a 1980s electric typewriter (can’t remember the brand right now). There’s something wonderful, mystical even, about writing on these typewriters. And there’s the music of writing–tickity tickity tick ding schwoop tickity tickity tick ding…

I have nothing against computers. They definitely make the editing process and storage easier, but they just don’t have the same feel when writing.

What is your preferred writing equipment?