Writing Myth #7,298...

...Drugs and/or alcohol help with creativity.

Sure, Hemingway has his literary groupies, and many stories abound about his unabashed alcoholism, but please believe me when I tell you: an altered state does not a great writer make.

As an undergrad, I stepped outside my comfort zone and took a poetry workshop. This was the hardest class for me because honestly? I don't get poetry. I don't know how to create it, appreciate it or even critique it. I know when one is likable, but I couldn't tell you why. I could use fancy words like "imagery" and such, but I really wouldn't know what I was talking about.

So anyway, I took this class and every week or so we had to produce a poem. Now I'm a perfectionist so I over-thought every single assignment. But one in particular was so rough that a classmate and I figured we'd just get drunk ala Hemingway and churn out some greatness (not unlike the episode of "The Facts of Life" when Sue Ann smoked weed before writing her book report).

It failed miserably.

Handing me alcohol is like saying, "Hey Raquel, go get your jammies and go to sleep until about 2pm tomorrow, when you'll wake up wondering why you're only wearing one sock." It doesn't open you up creatively and neither does weed. That stuff holds you back until it becomes this crutch: "I can't write unless I have a class of wine (or five)." Or it takes you on these random detours that rarely end up being something you'd stamp your name on.

You can write because this is the talent with which you've been blessed. Yes, the heathen Raquel used the word blessed! All you need is to find inspiration in the smallest details of everyday life- in a lone flower growing in the yard, in the green stuff growing on a dish in the sink, in the man that ran to catch a train only to bust his ass instead. Anything can spawn a story and you don't need to chemically open your mind. You just need to open your eyes.

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse