I’ve been enjoying William Gibson’s new weblog a great deal (and not just for the cheap thrill of finding we have some of the same books on the bedside table).

I found his meditation on Timothy Leary, drugs, and writing both touching and amusing. I’ve certainly long agreed with him on this point:

Leary once told me that he thought that the best single piece of advice he could give to a writer was to either write stoned and edit sober, or vice versa. For me, functionally and organically, composition and revision are aspects of one process, territories on a continuum. The need to chemically define two individual states seems anything but a shortcut. The journey out from baseline and back seems a waste of time, when, if you accept that one cannot step twice into the same Heracletian river, simply waiting a while will have the same effect. The Heracletian “you” that returns to the task is not the “you” that put it down earlier. That, to me, is the easier shortcut. Of course, if one were really inducing that state only because one enjoyed it, and wished to repeat it, that would be something else.

I’m not averse to having a glass of wine while writing, but really I find that a little time and distance from a piece brings enough change in self to give me the fresh eyes that I need. Inebriation? Not a useful working tool, at least not for me.