The quote “write drunk, edit sober” is often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway who, as it turns out, never wrote drunk. While Hemingway was definitely a boozer, he wrote in the morning and didn’t start drinking until the afternoon. Or so I’m told.
Writing drunk may sound entertaining, but mistakes get made, tempers flare, and even a small slip up like posting a personal tweet to your company page instead of your personal page can cause a disaster. (On more than one occasion I have heard the excuse, “I was drinking and then one thing led to another.”)
From books to website content to social media posts, people need to write if they want to attract high-paying clients. The best way to attract high-paying clients is to write and to speak.
Michelle Stansbury, PR expert and founder of Little Penguin PR in San Diego, shares that she recommends people take this kind of “write drunk, edit sober” advice with a grain of salt. “There are those who argue that ‘writing drunk’ is a mental state allowing carefree application of words to paper and not a physical state of intoxication,” says Stansbury. “There is much to be said for loosening up your grip on your words. Perhaps, you may even begin sounding like a human being through your writing, flawed, but authentic.”
For some, writing a blog post or article is a daunting task. Writing drunk is bad advice. But sober editing is great advice.
“Some may need a little liquid courage to get the juices flowing, so all I can suggest is to make sure you are 100% offline because the Internet never forgets,” says Stansbury. “Most importantly, don’t forget the second part of the advice – edit sober. Better yet, get a fresh pair of eyes on your draft to find your typos and grammatical errors.”
Not everyone is good at being both creative and detail oriented. In today’s world, writing isn’t only delegated to the Hemingways of society; but also engineers, consultants, and CEOs (among others) are often called upon to write blog posts, communicate with their audience through emails or social media, or write a speech.
“Understand your limitations and find someone to help,” says Stansbury. “If you are detail oriented, create a bullet point list of the key facts and information you want to convey and have a freelance writer turn that into narrative. If you are highly creative, employ a fact-checker and editor to keep you in line.”
In today’s world of tools like spell check and Internet reference checks, there are no longer any excuses for typos and incorrect facts from creatives. One editing client of mine quoted Oprah Winfrey; the problem was, when I did a fact check, Oprah was quoting Mahatma Gandhi. Another client thought she was quoting Charles Darwin--turns out the fact check revealed it was a Mississippi professor paraphrasing Darwin. The fact that a website on the Internet gave you the quote is no defense at all.
For full disclosure, in the early days of writing for Forbes.com I made the mistake of using only one Internet source to fact check a column. Mistakes were made. Now I run columns by two sources and I also use a free plagiarism checker. I suggest you do the same.
Even those who are not in writing-focused positions have access to low-cost tools that can help them edit their writing. Writers don't have to do their own editing, nor should they. “Get a fresh pair of eyes on your draft to find your typos and grammatical errors,” says Stansbury. “Relying on others who aren't as familiar with your writing can catch errors and typos that you may have overlooked.” A proof reading editor will help you catch Scott Free when you meant scot-free (without suffering), a book forward when you meant a foreword and “a tough road to hold” when you meant a “tough row to hoe” (you don’t hold or hoe roads, but you do hoe rows in a garden).
To err is human, but don’t count on forgiveness for your writing.
