Hello and welcome to National Drunken Writing Night, where sentences are incoherent, thoughts are even more so, and bloggers have an excuse to sit around the house and drink. The sun is fading beyond the trees in the Park and I’m polishing off an Irish highball as my first drink. I suppose I could have opted for a tequila sunset, but that would have been too cruel a drink to start off with. And besides, there isn’t any tequila at the bar. In fact, much of my bar is composed of bottles leftover from last year.

A few things I should observe: I generally do not write when drinking. Bad enough that caffeine is a part of my writing habits and that I often go nuts with the coffee when working on a lengthy piece. But I cannot imagine much sense to come from drinking and writing — never understood the idealization. I’ve heard stories of an editor regularly insisting to his staff, “Write while drunk! Edit while sober!” Why? Is it not better to get everything as taut as possible in the first draft? To write as coherently as you can?

Granted, there is some value if the commandment were to suggest, “Keep it loose and dirty in the writing stage. Use your brain in the editing stage.” So perhaps this is what the editor was suggesting.

Incidentally, the combination of Jameson and ginger ale is not as bad as I expected, although it does seem incongruous to the Jameson. I think I’m going to man it up a bit and follow this with a straight shot of bourbon.