Blogger: Michelle Ule
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
I grew up in a community of folks who knew how to party well on Saturday nights. Charming, funny, clever and lovely, they nearly all enjoyed a drink or two. And then they thought themselves funnier, more clever and devastatingly attractive. I learned early to distrust alcohol and the words of people even “slightly under the weather.”
Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hunter Thompson and Lillian Hellman all were famous for their “alternate reality” ingestion while creating literature. I’m sure we all know more authors who had a problem with drink and drugs. Did it help their creativity?
Hemingway notoriously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Is it possible these talented writers needed the alcohol to get them past the personal horrors from which their writing came?
And is it only alcohol and drug abuse that’s the problem?
Kay Redfield Jamison detailed her life with manic-depression in her well-known book, An Unquiet Mind. I’ve never forgotten, however, how she described her reluctance to take lithium because while it moderated her “lows” it also took the edge off her manic “highs,” thus leaving her feeling less creative. (Nowadays she knows to take her medicine and feels she leads a more productive life.)
Hemingway and Fitzgerald succeeded in writing fine works of literature because they had an uncommonly devoted editor: Maxwell Perkins. Famous for his uncanny ability to find the glorious writing among the rough, Perkins nursed a generation of writers through their demons to produce quality work. Among other heroic activities, Perkins induced Thomas Wolfe to cut 90,000 words out of his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
Where does creativity come from? Does it need a chemical “start?” What types of non-addictive behavior have you observed or used to encourage your own creativity or writing life?
Wow… great post, Michelle.
There’s a little, chemically induced voice that whispers, “You’re better altered than in your real state.” It’s part of the lie, I think. “I do my best work stoned.”
The heart is deceitful, and drugs/alcohol make it more deceitful, especially self-deceitful.
Maybe great writing feels the pain and tells the truth about it.
Just don’t go criticizing caffeine, or we’re gonna have trouble…
Having grown up in the era where everything was better with drugs, I can say from personal experience I get the inclination to declare that creativity somehow improves under the influence. However, it was quite the opposite for me. Those methods robbed me of all motivation.
The only dependency I have now is on the Holy Spirit. Apart from Him I can do nothing, create nothing, write nothing.
And, yeah, you go criticizing Coca Cola and it’ll get rough around here. 😉
For me, creativity begets creativity. If I’m feeling uninspired, I open a good book and read a few chapters, studying how the writer uses words, how scenes are crafted, etc. The trick is to read enough to get ideas flowing but NOT long enough to get hooked so that I can’t get back to work!
Various things spur creativity in me. Mulling over my characters makes me love them more and eager to write. A good craft book gets me excited too. Also, reading a good book helps. I know music doesn’t work for me. I need silence to work.
I find listening to music while cleaning house (hands are busy while mind is off somewhere else) helps me come up with scenes or work through “plot knots”.
One wonders whether these larger-than-life authors would have succeeded without Maxwell Perkins. Yet who ever hears of him? I’m so glad you educated me about this unsung hero.
Thanks for all your comments this week; I understand the subject matter was not uplifting!
I’m glad you know Maxwell Perkins’ name, Julie. He truly was the strength behind so many household writer names from the 1920’s and 30’s and no, we haven’t seen another editor like him since. Scott Berg wrote a very interesting bio of Perkins probably 20 years ago.
When you read as many queries as we do about the enormous difficulties people overcome, it’s astonishing anyone can write a decent manuscript! And yet that genius, that urge to create, impels so many to write away. It’s important to honor those who take the time and effort to bleed into their computer keyboards.
We know and we respect all writers.
And why no, I don’t think caffeine is anything but a GOOD substance where writers are concerned . . . 🙂
Doing other creative things (beading, knitting, painting, gardening, whatever) jump-starts my writing creativity. I can’t write if I drink, and any kind of mind-altering substance inevitably sends me to sleep so what’s the point? Maybe I’m just getting old, but I’d rather write sober.
As a recovering alcoholic I can safely say that the thinking, “I work better under the influence” is just one more excuse the alcoholic uses to drink some more. And if there’s some good writing in there somewhere, all the better! Though…Jesus did make wine out of water as His first miracle. 🙂