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Craft and Draft: Creators Make Terrible Critics

November 26, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

NaNoWriMo 2013 slowly slides to a close, with some writers who fell off their bikes on the 15th pedaling maniacally to catch up, some who pulled ahead early sipping brandy and smoking cigars, some who got lost in the maze of November crying into the 13,531 words of their half-formed SciFi/Noir/Erotica mutants, unsure of what comes next. It’s nearly time for reflection, lessons learned, time to hack away at the manuscript and see if its future is in the hands of an editor, or the hands of the garbage man.

Win or lose, you’ve entered an elite club: people who actually tried to write a novel. It’s not quite as exclusive as the full blown authorship club, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.

To the uninitiated, book writing looks prestigious and shiny, all private toilets and free time and fancy notebooks. But those who’ve snuck into these hallowed halls, tried to pierce the veil of novelcraft with sharpened, inked-out pens, know its dark secret. They know what eludes so many in the dark, lonely nights of a room illuminated only by the eerie blue florescence of a computer screen.

Writing a whole book, with chapters and paragraphs and some kind of cohesive plot, is hard.

Even for the most seasoned literary book-chefs, cooking tens of thousands of delicious words to perfection and then plating them in just the right way to make them appetizing to a hungry reader is a lot more complicated than say, making toast. It requires myriad often uncomplimentary skill sets: creativity, grammar, discipline, focus, logic, organization, hygiene. It’s a highly intense and demanding art form that, at many more times than people like to admit, is a lot like work.

Even if your novel is destined for the haunted sepulcher of that box of artistic rejects under your bed, be glad that you at least tried. Trying in this case won’t actually earn you anything (sorry Millennials! I can joke because I am one), but it does teach you an incredible amount about the creative process.

You learn how much effort it takes to write a successful book. How much mental dexterity and synaptic sweat. How much time, energy, and sacrifice goes into getting those words off the couch, into the gym, and then into underwear-model shape. You should, if you even sort of tried, realize that the authors who can and do write novel after amazing novel, are not just talented mofos, but also really hard workers.

But most importantly, it teaches you to not be so critical of someone else’s art.

There is nothing worse to me than the ruthless, mean-spirited critic who unabashedly slices through someone else’s work with a scythe of subjectivity, who goes out of his way to point out every flaw, no matter how trivial, as if his judgment is the final arbiter in the decision of quality and worth. There is nothing worse than a critic who critiques in a vacuum of ignorance and inexperience. There is nothing worse than the critic who does not create, has never created, and never plans to create.

If you’ve never gotten down there into the trenches, never had to slog through off days and busy days, never had to pour the art from your seeping wounds at the expense of yourself, you don’t know what each mistake means. You don’t realize that the author or painter or brewer put a piece of themselves into that thing you just gave 2 stars out of 5. You lack empathy, compassion, and close association with what happens on the other side of the creative spectrum.

To critique without an understanding of the effort involved is lazy, often valueless, and frankly, pretty boring. Digest something from the comfort of your chair, form an opinion, express said opinion. It doesn’t require a person to truly learn a craft or skill, it’s just an open avenue for them to channel their pathos, gratify their own tunnel-vision fueled interpretation of the piece with little to no concern for its creator.

But now that you’ve tried to write a book, you’re less likely to judge other creators so harshly. You’re more likely to be sympathetic to little mistakes, more likely to connect with what the writer was trying to do, even if the execution isn’t flawless. Because you’ve been there.  You know how hard it is to weave in a theme or perfect all the dialogue. Now that you’ve tried to create (or actually have created) you’re going to pass judgement with a softer, kinder, more appreciative eye.

You are now, and forever, if you have even a bit of humanistic empathy in your soul, a terrible critic. And that’s awesome.

“It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.”  ― Chuck Palahniuk

“It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

Ask Me Anything: A LitLib Q&A

September 10, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Writing can seem like a heavily one-sided conversation. The writer dwells in the dark with a keyboard, creating worlds and wonders in social isolation, publishing them with limited feedback outside of editorial review, only interacting with readers after the fact with public readings and signings, or the occasional guest appearance or podcast.

This model makes sense for a book, as it is a complete, stand-alone product, and the author can’t really be expected to follow every reader around, lurking just on the periphery of their day, ready to jump out and answer questions as they might arise.

But this model breaks down on a blog. I’m sitting right here, only distanced from you by an LCD, some wires, and some IP addresses. I can be expected to just answer questions. In fact, one of my favorite parts about blogging is reading and responding to the comments on my posts.The comments I got on my recent essay about my father legitimately warmed my heart, and helped me through an incredibly rough time. I have conversations with my wife about how to best respond to thoughtful, poignant feedback, and on more than one occasion, comments have given me ideas for new stories and essays.

Not only should I be expected to respond to comments, I actively want to.

So: Ask me anything. Seriously, anything, as long as it’s not vulgar or generally offensive.

Ask me about writing. Or beer. Or writing about beer.

Ask me about this site, or my day job, or what I dreamed about last night.

Ask me about grammar or photography or coffee or the State of Union. I’m game.

The only rule is that you only get to ask one (1) question. Post it in the comments below. I’ll pick my favorites, answer them as honestly as possible, and then link back to the blog of the person who asked the question.

Fire away.

Maybe ask me why I used a picture of a "No Surfing" flag in this post?

Maybe ask me why I used a picture of a “No Surfing” flag in this post?

Craft and Draft: Writing and White Lightning

April 24, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Some of the Jungian Collective Unconscious must have slithered into my brain on that day, about three years ago, when I was trying to come up with a name for this blog. I like to think I named this blog in the way most people name blogs: I randomly came up with something alliterative, convinced myself it was clever, gloated to myself about how clever it was, and then registered the domain.

But in choosing this name, I inadvertently formed a tributary that emptied into those ancient streams of whiskey, and tapped into a keg of ideas bigger than this little blog. I never really considered its meaning, all the latent unspoken truth in two words and a conjunction, until I’d been writing for a while. I never noticed that connection between writing and drinking that dripped into every post, my running themes, and my entire literary life.

We all know that many famous writers, historically, drank. Many current writers drink. Many unborn masters of literary prose, still swirling in the cosmic well of zygotes and potential, will drink. Alcohol is as natural as wanting to express and communicate ideas. As long as yeast eats sugar and paper eats ink, writers will drink and drinkers will write.

I drink. Not exactly a shock to anyone who reads this blog or knows me otherwise. In the harsh light of reality I probably drink too much, if you compared my intake to the recommendations of doctors, Surgeon Generals, or Mormons. But I don’t drink to dull any emotional pain, for there is very little pain in my life to dull. I don’t drink to escape an unfair world in which I have no control, for I’ve worked hard to be in control of my life.

I drink because I like the taste of alcohol. Ale, wine, whiskey, rum, et al. I’ve gotten to a point where “beer” is probably my favorite flavor. It really has nothing to do with the alcohol content, but more so with injecting my palette with pleasurable experience. I’d gnaw on beer flavored gum if it was available and wouldn’t get me fired for drinking (or chewing) on the job. I’ve eaten “energy bars” made from spent beer grain. I even pop hops into my mouth while I’m homebrewing, nibbling on pellets or chomping on cones.

But I also drink to experience an ephemeral connection to something older, something external myself. A fleeting glance at the infinite. A forbidden communion with greater truth that we pay for with a hangover. A way throw my brain out into the same world as Joyce and Hemingway and Poe, to see what they saw, to figure out why they were looking in the first place. In the same way many people pray to find their gods, to ascertain certain truths, to understand their lives and the universe, I genuflect at the altar of the nature deity, CH3CH2OH.

Glass in One Hand, Pen in the Other

What makes alcohol special? There are many other ways to alter one’s mind if that’s the goal: meditation, prayer, marijuana, mushrooms, opiates, exercise. But all of those things are hard to do while writing. Every tried to write while jogging? Believe me, it doesn’t work like you’d hope. A lot of other drugs require both hands or complete focus for a period of time, during which you can’t write. Alcohol sits and waits for you. It doesn’t mind that you’re neglecting it while typing away. It is your passive, quiet friend at the back of the party who you haven’t talked to for 2 hours, but who will still toss you a beer from the cooler when he sees you heading his way.

In addition to being legal and relatively cheap in most places, alcohol lends itself well to the physical aspects of the writing process. It takes time to form a good paragraph, craft a good metaphor, just like it takes time to tame a good single malt, to savor a good IPA. The glass goes down as the word count goes up. There is a direct connection between an increase in productivity and a decrease in liquid.

When you stop to take a moment to reread or to think of your next transition, you can take a sip, let the beer or wine or spirit lubricate the rusty metal of those mental gears. And then just as quickly as you picked the glass up it is back down, your fingers back on the keyboard, the next step in the delicate waltz of clicking and sipping.

And just like an idea takes time to congeal, to fully form into something effective and readable, the alcohol slowly, methodically creeps into your mind. Opiates and cannaboids hit your brain quickly and unforgivingly; you’ll go from sober to stoned too quickly for even your most energetic ideas to keep up. But alcohol, no, it is patient. It lets your ideas sprout wings as the buzz rolls in. You get drunk on creativity and the booze itself, nearly at the same time, as long as you’re not downing shots and shotgunning beers like a Frat boy during Greek Week.

Two sides, same coin

Those artistic types who drink, who appreciate the craft in equal balance with the crunk, seem to fall into two categories. The writers who drink to drown their demons, hide them from the world, and the writers who drink to let the demons loose, free them from their midnight cages.

The prior are the kinds of people who live on the teetering edge of debilitating stress. The kind who stagger down a fine, fine line between wanting and needing. These people constantly wage a war against their pasts, trying to forget or make sense of those unfair events, using alcohol as a way to quiet the manic buzz of painful history darting around their mind for just a minute so that they can create.

If you are like this, you’re in good company: James Joyce was a ball of neurosis, likening his favorite white wine to the lightning he feared. Tennessee Williams knocked back more than his fair share, trying to confront his sexuality in a time when such things were kept well behind closed closet doors.

But for every head there is a tail. The latter kind of writer embraces the blur, loves the lack of inhibition that comes from the warm and fuzzy ethanol bloat. These writers (including the one you’re reading right now) include the booze-fairy among their muses, letting the scents and bubbles and lacing mingle with and taint their pool of metaphors. These people find inspiration in the bottle and the bottom, often letting their minds wander into unexplored landscapes while firmly holding the hand of inebriation, discovering  things they probably wouldn’t have in the harsh burn of a sober morning.

If you’re one of these writers, you’re likely to meet Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Faulker, and a ton of other famous writers who weren’t shy about their drinking habits, whenever you finally make it to that mead-filled greathall in Vallhalla.

Cursed Blessing

Disclaimer! It is not healthy to drink heavily. In fact it’s quite unhealthy if science is to be believed. Excessive drinking also leads to crappy writing, mainly because your fingers hit all the wrong keys and your eyes can’t really see the screen. Alcohol is a power that should be treated with respect, lest it consume you as you consume it. My father passed an adage on to me some years ago, a clever warning about the dangers of that one last beer: “The man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, and the drink takes the man.”

There is a weird pervasive attitude in the world of art that a person must have a screwed up past or some ravenous personal demons to be successful. It sometimes goes as far as to suggest that the alcohol or drugs or other addictions were the reason for the success. They cite the great artists and authors, point out that some of the most perfect art was created by some of the most broken people. They claim the best memoir is built from a horrible childhood, and the best canvases are covered in just as much blood as paint.

I’m gonna have to go ahead and call bullshit on that. There are any number of successful people who lived either decidedly plain or otherwise happy lives. Like Erik Larson or David Sedaris or David Quammen. They still have plenty to say, wonderfully fresh ideas, and enjoy abundant, well-deserved respect.

Pain isn’t necessary. Helpful? Sure, maybe, for some people. Mandatory? Nah dude.

Alcohol is just another experience out there. One that a lot of creative types turn too, probably out of ease and access and history. One that can be fun or awful, that can enhance or destroy. It’s up to you as a person and an artist to decide how or when or if to use it. But remember to be reasonable. No one writes well hungover.

Remember Hemingway’s immortal words:

Write drunk, edit sober.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." -Hunter S. Thompson

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
-Hunter S. Thompson

Guest Post: How to Drink like a Writer – Find a Bar and Move In

April 22, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

This week, to honor the name of my blog, I’ll be talking about drinking, writing, drinking while writing, writing while drinking, and maybe even writing about drinking while drinking and writing. To that end, Ed from The Dogs of Beer has written a post about the history of writers, their haunts, and their drinks. If you’d like to write a guest post for LitLib, send an email with your ideas to literatureandlibation@gmail.com. Enjoy!

gryph

You can see why we call him, “Big Head Dog”.

Hello everyone!  My name is Ed Morgan and I write a little craft beer blog called The Dogs of Beer.  I’ve been writing for almost two years now, focusing mainly on the craft beer scene in and around the state of Delaware but at the end of the day, I’ll write about anything that strikes a chord with me.  I’m aided in this endeavor by my girlfriend’s dog Gryphon (AKA “Big Head Dog”), who serves as photo and layout editor.  Say hello to Oliver’s readers, Gryph.

When Oliver asked me to write a guest post for his blog, I have to admit that I was a little hesitant.  After all, if you’re a regular here at Literature and Libation you know that above all else, this is a blog about writing, and that Oliver is a writer.  I, however count among my literary achievements such things as believing that over the past year I’ve used semi-colons properly no less than 5 times.  However, I’m sure that Oliver would counsel me that taking oneself out of one’s writing “comfort zone” is what all writers should do on occasion, and when he suggested I write a post about writers and drinking, I have to admit I was pretty keen on the idea.

I’m well aware that alcohol has long been a muse for artistic people.  The love affair between the once banned Absinthe and the creative likes of Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is well documented.  Many rock musicians have turned to alcohol thinking that it will heighten their creativity, sadly sometimes with deadly consequences.  But musicians and artists are not unique when it comes to turning to alcohol. Writers too have had a fondness for drink and one of the things I’ve always found interesting in my travels and in my reading are the establishments themselves that have been made famous by association.

For instance, the Eagle & Child in Oxford, England, for all intents and purposes might have been nothing more than an unassuming local English pub, if it had not become famous for hosting the “Inklings;” a literary group that met every Tuesday morning in the Rabbit Room.  The group was run by two Oxford locals: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Pete’s Tavern, in New York City, can lay claim to being a regular haunt for writer William Sydney Porter who, under the pen name O. Henry, wrote some of America’s most endearing stories including The Ransom of Red Chief and The Gift of the Magi.  The tavern embraces this by advertising itself as “The Tavern O’Henry Made Famous”, and still maintains “The O’Henry Table”.  While statements that The Gift of the Magi was written in the tavern are suspect, O’Henry did use the tavern (named Healy’s when O’Henry lived in NYC) as an inspiration for Kenealy’s Tavern that appears in his story, The Lost Blend.

And of course any Jimmy Buffett fan is familiar with Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, Florida, a popular haunt for Ernest Hemingway.  The bar (which now sits on Duval Street after owner Joe Russell moved it there after refusing to pay a rent increase from $3 a week to $4) originally sat at the location now occupied by Captain Tony’s Saloon and was Hemingway’s preferred drinking stop when he lived in Key West.  At the time however, the name of the bar was The Silver Slipper, which Hemingway hated, claiming it wasn’t “manly” enough. He badgered Russell to change it and Sloppy Joe’s was born.

Yes, the association between writers and their favorite watering holes can be pretty strong.  So strong in fact, that cities like London, Dublin, and New York have literary tours that allow you to walk around and visit some of the establishments that writers have held so dear.  But sadly, some bars, taverns and pubs have become associated with writers for the gravest of reasons.

When ever I go to NYC and step into The White Horse Tavern, I’m reminded of Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas, author of such classics as Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight and, And Death Shall Have No Dominion.  Although his death in November of 1953 was largely due to complications of pneumonia, the use of alcohol has always been cited as a contributing factor.  It doesn’t help quell these claims when only 6 days earlier, Thomas was seen stumbling out of the White Horse loudly claiming, “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies. I think that’s the record!” Years later in her autobiography, Dylan’s wife Caitlin would write, “But ours was a drink story, not a love story, just like millions of others. Our one and only true love was drink”

One can no longer walk into the Harbour Lights Bar in Dublin, Ireland but if you could, it probably would be practically impossible not to get a lesson on Irish writer Brendan Behan. Writer of Borstal Boy, an autobiographical account of Behan’s days in a Borstal prison due to his involvement in the IRA, and Hold Your Hour and Have Another, Behan may not be a household name to people outside the writing world.  But he was an important figure in Ireland, and well known for his drinking.  He’s credited with being the writer to first describe himself as “a drinker with a writing problem” and is the subject of The Pogues’ song Streams of Whiskey.  One night, Behan collapsed while drinking at the Harbour Lights Bar and died later at MeathHospital from what’s been called “complications due to alcoholism and diabetes.”

I had been to the Fell’s Point, Baltimore, institution The Horse You Rode In On for a few drinks and some great live music on many occasions before I learned of it’s connection to the great Edgar Allan Poe.  Poe’s exploits are legendary and probably well known by those who read Oliver’s blog.  But some of the greatest mysteries left to us by the father of the modern detective story are the details surrounding his death.  Poe was discovered, delirious, on the streets of Baltimore on Oct 3, 1849, in clothes that weren’t his and never regained enough awareness to say what happened to him before dying on Oct 7.  People have argued many theories on the cause of his death; include delirium tremens, syphilis, tuberculosis, cooping, and even rabies.  But what everyone does agree on is that the bar, “The Horse” was the last place he was seen before being discovered on the 3rd.

I’m sure one of the reasons Oliver asked me to write this post was to share my own personal thoughts on writing and drinking.  Let’s start out by saying that the chances of me ever making a bar famous by dropping dead in it are very slim, however since I do write a beer blog, it’s easy to assume that for me the two go hand in hand.  Well, that’s not quite true.  When I’m writing a beer review I do like to be drinking the beer I’m reviewing.  This gives me the ability to think about and capture what I’m experiencing in real time and make sure I’m not leaving out any important details that might be forgotten later.

However, what I’ve learned is that drinking and writing is a slippery slope for me, just like drinking and playing music. When I was playing in pick up bands there was an amount of alcohol that would calm the stage jitters and make me play with confidence.  And then there was the amount of alcohol that turned my fretboard finesse into the inept clawing of a cloven ox.  And what I found to be true back then is that the difference between those two amounts of alcohol was very small.

So in writing, a few beers are nice to relax the mind and get the creative juices flowing, but it doesn’t take much more to cause me to turn out 700 words that look like I typed it with my face on a keyboard where the Z, G, and P keys are stuck.  Of course some would suggest that it’s not all bad, that at least the basic framework is there and all I need to do is clean it up later when I’m more lucid.  But you writers out there know that poorly written paragraphs are like “fix-it-up” houses.  Some you can do something with it, and then with others it’s best to just bulldoze the whole thing and start from scratch.  And since I do that enough when I’m sober, I chose to put the keyboard down whenever I feel that familiar buzz taking over my brain.

I guess you could say that when it comes to writing, alcohol is my muse, but not necessarily always my friend.

I’d like to thank Oliver for allowing me to guest post on his blog.  To show my appreciation, knowing that Oliver is a cat person, I’d like to share a couple pictures my girlfriend and I recently took at the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West, Florida.  Hemingway was a well known lover of polydactyl cats and his house, now a museum, plays home to 45 decedents of his cat, Snowball.  The cats have the full run of the estate, as shown by this picture of one of the cats calmly lying on a bed that visitors are not allowed to touch.

Ah Gryphon, the cat picture please?

cat1

Yeah, that’s not the picture I took.  What’s your problem?

cat2

I know we have an unspoken “no cat rule” at the Dogs of Beer, but we’re doing a guest post for Oliver and I think he’d like to see some of the photos I took of the Hemingway cats.  So could you just put up the picture I took of the cat relaxing on the bed, please?cat3

Ok, this isn’t funny.  You’re embarrassing me.  Please put the picture up or you and I are going to have a major problem.  I’d keep in mind that you’re still young enough for me to have you neutered.  Last chance fur ball, put up the picture!

cat5

Thank you.  Now was that so hard?  The cats have four full time attendants and receive a vet visit every Wednesday.  And as you can see by the happy expression on this cat, they really appreciate how well they’re taken care of.

cat6

I hate you.

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