Writing & Drinking
This is not the first time I’ve thought about how my evening cocktail is affecting my writing productivity the following day.
Yesterday I was in the Duty Free shop at the Barcelona airport on my way back to Brooklyn. I saw something that halted me:
An entire display of non-alcoholic liquors, spirits, and wines!
I studied every bottle on the shelves, riveted. There was a wide array of gin alternatives, for example, including from Tanqueray. I don’t know if they are any good, but apparently they exist. Martini even makes a series of non-alcoholic vermouths! (In Barcelona, vermouth is essential to any bar, except it’s called vermut and I love it.)
If I didn’t have so much luggage yesterday, I would have bought several bottles. Since I’ve gotten back to Brooklyn, I can’t stop thinking about all that non-alcoholic alcohol. This morning in my jet lagged state (I woke up at 2:30am), I went down a rabbit hole searching for the best non-alcoholic liquors and wine-alternatives and can’t believe how many I found. I am tempted to try all of them. I found myself fantasizing about the different cocktails I could make with these beautifully-bottled, alcoholic-free options. Especially after I also read this distressing NYTimes article about the negative impact of alcohol on our health.
Health aside, the reason I’ve become so fascinated with the possibility of making non-alcoholic cocktails of late?
For the sake of my writing life.
This is a subject I’ve thought about off and on for the last 10 years or so, and I even had a period a few years back when I gave up drinking entirely when I was trying to finish a book that was past deadline. But the subject came up again recently in a conversation with my writer colleague and friend, Emma Gannon, over at The Hyphen. Emma told me she was experimenting with (mostly) giving up drinking for a while so she can have her mornings back. Ever since our conversation, I haven’t stopped thinking about whether I should do the same.
But it’s oh so hard in practice.
I love to drink socially, and do so about 3 times per week. Meeting up for happy hour is typical with my writer friends in Brooklyn, and don’t get me started on the world famous wine and cocktails in Barcelona, where I live half the year. Then there’s the fact that one of my all-time favorite Brooklyn things to do is to stoop-sit with my roommate from college and share a bottle of wine between us.
However it’s also true: while one glass of wine probably won’t affect my sleep or how I feel in the morning, two glasses likely will. Same goes for cocktails. I often tell myself I’m only going to have one glass, but if there is a bottle open it’s hard to say no to a refill, and two cocktails are always more fun than one. Incidentally, I am really good at saying no to a third glass of anything—that is not the issue. The issue is: 2 is enough to affect how I feel the next morning.
The mornings are when I write. And sleeping well is essential to my writing. So when I haven’t slept well, it’s much harder to get much writing done. Or at all. And while I only drink socially, 3 nights per week is nearly half my week. That adds up to 3 possible mornings each week when I might get not much writing done. And feel groggy while I try.
But this morning, as I went wild exploring non-alcoholic liquors, aperitifs, and wines, I got kind of excited. Maybe this is my answer! I can still enjoy my cocktail and happy hours, and just do so with non-alcoholic alcohol in my drinks.
The best part is, I know that doing so will help my writing life.
The challenge: I don’t know how widely available these alternatives are at bars, and I most often drink wine and cocktails when I am out of the house. (Though it’s also true that one of my favorite cocktail bars in Brooklyn, Sweet Polly, has a section of non-alcoholic cocktails on their menu, and I’ve noticed some other bars are starting to offer non-alcoholic cocktails as well.)
I should be clear: I’m not in the market to give up drinking altogether. But I am very interested in expanding my options when I go out to regularly include alcohol-free cocktails and wine. And I’ve begun to think a lot about what would happen if I committed 1 day out of 3 to only non-alcoholic options, or even 2 out of 3, and giving this a try for a month. I’ve always been good at pushing through in the mornings when I’m tired from the night before, yet there is nothing like those days when I wake up refreshed and well-slept. I want that all the time in my writing life.
My hope is that if I do this enough, and if I seek out alternative cocktails options and places where non-alcoholic cocktails and wines are available, then it will become another regular habit in the service of my writing (and well, my overall health and well-being). And I love writing habits—good ones.
Does anyone else think about how alcohol affects their writing life and productivity (if at all) or am I (and maybe Emma) the only ones? I welcome all comments and also suggestions about favorite cocktail & liquor alternatives, as well as bars offering creative options for people trying to opt-out for various reasons.
About me: I'm Donna, and I’m the writer of more than 20 books, fiction, memoir, and nonfiction alike, including THE NINE LIVES OF ROSE NAPOLITANO. This substack is called The Plot Doctor because I love working with other writers on their books, and plot & structure are my specialty. I’ve taught at a number of MFA programs, but I’ve been on faculty at FDU’s Low Residency MFA for more than a decade now. I’m so happy that you’re here, reading and I’d love to hear from you!
I bought a couple premade non-al cocktails the other day by "Clever"; I really liked the Clever G&T, tho the Clever Mojito was a little sweeter than I wanted it to be. And I see that they make a gin alternative by itself and I want to try it!