Quote from my boss: You asked how to improve your writing, right? Have someone else do it.
This was more “work” stuff than fun stuff. Apparently my proofing is not up to snuff for paid writing. I will see if he will allow a clinical trial of the “alcohol method” of writing.
See “On Writing” by Stephen King. He wrote in such an alcoholic stupor that he doesn’t remember the writing process of one of this best-selling works.
Has anyone seen the draft of said work prior to publisher editing?
One of my questions, one that I have not resolved, is how much of any particular work is the original author, and how much is the editor? My personal experience with editors (mostly corp and scholastic) is that my final output is “not me”. It isn’t what I wrote. The message is different. The voice is not mine either. Is it possible that Mr King’s famous work is famous due to the efforts of a great editorial process (and his name) more than the actual quality of the draft he generated?
Not a judgement, just a thought echoing in the empty space above my neck stump.
A sound and perspicacious observation? 
A disconcerting and ominous development! 
Worried fluff
Dear Fflurf,
sdhf iera[ojcl hdiuw w jmfpwoir mfa
Quote from a review of The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, by Olivia Laing:
http://bookforum.com/inprint/020_05/12757
ps
Judging from our virtual postbag in technical support, alcohol stops some people from writing altogether, at least until they buy a new computer. We get occasional emails from people who have spilled their beer, G&T or whatever over their laptops, with catastrophic effect on the operation of the machine. Of course, we also get emails from people whose laptops have succumbed to tea, water and other innocuous substances, so it’s not a statistically useful piece of information.
Mind you, even water isn’t really innocuous. As Hurricane Jack, friend of the great Para Handy, said, "“No’ a worse thing you could drink … It rots your boots; what’ll it no’ do on your inside? Water’s fine for sailin’ on – there’s nothing better – but it’s no’ a drink for sailors.” [Neil Munro]
I think it’s in his novel The Debt to Pleasure that the author John Lanchester has his protagonist remark that an Irish coffee is the perfect mix of poison and antidote.
The book is itself an enjoyable, if camp, combination of gastronomy and horror, by the way.
Clemens has a short story where Grandma’ tells him not to drink clear liquids (I think that was how it was said, I can’t find it). So he promised, and ever allowed water to pass his lips from that day forward. Luckily for him whiskey isn’t clear.
I’ll have to look that up tonight. I know the compilation it is in, just can’t remember the published story name…
Sure, a couple of drinks make it easier to get into a flow of thought. Weed also affects my mood, and I tend to go deeper into stuff and focus more on small details.
Any substance will affect it in some kind of way, for better or worse. It seems to work positively for me.
Don’t know too much about alcohol improving my writing, but I’ll tell ya one thing I do know: Writing can improve my alcohol no end.
Sittin’ down in a great chair with a good book and an average bottle of beer makes for a pretty sweet evenin’.
Isn’t that reading, more than writing? 
I totally agree though
other peeps’s writin, then. 
Never tried writing with alcohol, maybe I should, see what happens. Bit of experimentation can’t hurt (famous last words of a lot of people I’m willing to bet).
Writing with a neat scotch - how very Hank Moody 
[quote=“charlie.stross”]
My experience is that alcohol doesn’t help me write – but it does help me socialize
Yeah, it helps me socialize… but then I can’t remember the word I need to describe something I’m talking about. To quote the philosopher Homer, “D’oh!”
Even a single bottle of beer, let alone two - or more, completely blows my concentration to smithereens. Can’t write anything that would amount to something coherent or worthy. Can’t enjoy reading a book, seeing a movie, listening to radio or whatever unless I am sober. The alcohol just destroys my concentration.
I have written “for money” since I was a teenager - and I’m now an old f@rt - but nothing I’ve ever written was done while inibriated. My brain just works that way.
And, fwiw background music does the same thing to my concentration. I need either a complete silence or very very much background noise when I write. But not music. Not singing, not intrumental. Just can’t have dat.