TIL the 'write drunk edit sober' trick actually worked for my first draft in 2 days flat

I was stuck on a short story for like 3 months, kept rewriting the same opening paragraph over and over. A buddy in my writers group told me to just slam out a terrible version on purpose, no filter, no fixing typos, just pure garbage. I sat down last Saturday with a bottle of cheap red wine and typed a 4,000 word draft that was honestly embarrassing to read the next morning. But here's the thing - when I sobered up and looked at it, there was this one weird scene about a guy arguing with a parking meter that actually had some life in it. I cut everything else, built the whole story around that scene, and submitted it to a local zine in Denver on Wednesday. Has anyone else found that leaning into bad writing by accident opens up better ideas than trying to be perfect?

2 comments

2 Comments

ericj453d ago

Man that parking meter bit sounds like gold. I did something similar last year with a horror story I was fighting with for weeks, downed a few IPAs one night and wrote this totally unhinged scene about a guy who starts seeing his reflection move wrong in every mirror. The rest of the draft was a mess but that one page made the whole thing click, so I feel you on the accidental discovery thing. It's like your brain stops second guessing itself when you're not trying to be clever, just letting the weird stuff out.

the_richard1d ago

Man, that parking meter conversation is exactly the kind of weird gold you only find when you're not trying. @ericj45 nailed it about the brain stopping second guessing. My first attempt at this method produced a draft where a character spent three pages explaining why he hated shoelaces, so yeah, there's plenty of embarrassing trash in there too. But that shoelace rant turned into a whole subplot about control issues, which I never would have thought of sober.