What Would Make A Writer Turn To Drink?

A Facebook post I read recently got me to thinking about the popular notion that writing and booze go hand in hand. Some very famous writers drank to excess.  I have no idea if they were tortured souls who drank as a consequence of their craft, or if they just plain liked going on a bender. Frankly, I suspect the latter.

I wondered if there could actually be an author-alcohol connection, so I kept that Facebook post in mind as I coped with a few challenges unique to writers to see whether they might drive me to drink.

For example, writers hear voices. Seriously. Ask any writer, and she’ll tell you that our characters are alive in our minds. At times, they can be very vocal. They talk to each other. They talk to us. They even argue with us. One character of mine was very upset because I wanted her to act like ‘A’ in situation ‘D.’ She refused, admonishing me for forcing her to behave out of character when I knew very well that in situation ‘D’ she would most certainly act like ‘B’ or possibly ‘C.’ She demanded a rewrite. To shut her up, I rewrote the objectionable scene, which of necessity forced me to rewrite the entire chapter. I then dug into my desk drawer for my stash of chocolate to console myself. I ate it all. I even licked the wrappers.

Writers are often forced to kill their darlings. No, not the people we love; the words we love. Writers frequently find they must delete the best loved and most perfect words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, or chapters they have ever written if they do not advance the story. Oh, the fictional humanity! The delete button recently excised an absolutely darling chapter from my work in progress. It went off on a tangent. It didn’t advance the story. It had to go—into my Orphan Scenes and Chapters File. Damn, no ice cream left, and the chocolate is gone. Has anyone seen the peanut butter?

Writers have an internal editor. It’s an insidious voice inside our heads, other than those of our characters, which causes us to second-guess ourselves by implying everything we just wrote is crap.  So we change that crap to what we hope is better crap, which we take to our critique partners for confirmation that it’s the best crap we’ve ever written. It really bugs me when I meet my critique partner for lunch and she tells me my chapter would be so much better if I had written it (you guessed it) the way I originally had it. That’s when I order the hot apple pie a la mode with caramel sauce to prove to myself that I can make a decision without listening to that infernal internal editor’s crappy advice.

Writers must write synopses when submitting their manuscripts and partial manuscripts. If anything could drive me to the bottle, the dreaded synopsis would be it. Describing an entire novel in two double spaced pages is an exercise in futility. Therein lies madness. For several hours, I agonized over the synopsis for my current work in progress—what to include and what to leave out. It was only a matter of time before I curled up into the fetal position. Maybe one little drink—nah. Not my style. I went to the snack cupboard in search of chocolate chip cookies, proving to myself that nothing writing-related would drive me to drink. I grabbed the bag of cookies and popped one into my mouth immediately. Yum. I started feeling better already. I bit into another.

As I munched, I passed by the scale tucked in a corner beside the kitchen table. I put it there to act as a deterrent. Hmmm. I’ve been eating a lot of goodies lately while I write, and I haven’t weighed myself in a long time. I wonder if . . . I stepped onto the scale and almost choked on the cookie. Good heavenly days—that scale cannot possibly be accurate. Maybe it’s the shoes; those thick soles make them kind of heavy. I kicked them off and stepped on again. Only a one-pound difference. Off came the jeans. Another half pound down—that’s all? I pulled my jeans back on, slipped on my shoes and returned the bag of cookies to the snack cupboard with all due speed. I then trekked to the wine rack and grabbed a bottle of merlot. I knew at last why writers drink.

Fewer calories.