Interview With Sadie
Plant
Interview by Jenna Glatzer
Ms. Plant is an author and lecturer from Birmingham, England. She is
the author of Writing on Drugs, The Most Radical Gesture,
and Zeros + Ones.
What inspires you to write?
Traveling - that's my great inspiration. Even taking a local bus or driving to the coast can fill me with
whatever it is that makes writing possible. I also have an odd collection of writers whose work I find very
inspiring - Joseph Conrad and Yashar Kemal to name just two. But more generally,
I'm one of those people who said "I'm going to be a writer" as a very young kid -
and I've no idea where I got this from. I wrote poems as soon as I could write, and it really feels as though
writing chose me rather than me choosing it - now it seems as natural and necessary to me as
breathing.
There have been times when I've wished something else had chosen me - although it brings great pleasures,
writing can seem such a strange thing to do. But by now, it's simply what I do, and I've given up wondering
why or where it comes from.
How did you get your first book published?
I was very lucky with my first book, The Most Radical Gesture. I'd written
my PhD thesis on the situationists, and although I decided not to try to get it published as a
book (I'd had enough of it at the time!), I did publish a short article on some of its major themes in Radical
Philosophy. To my amazement, two publishers then contacted me and asked if I'd develop
it into a book - and, in the face of such enthusiasm, all my reservations melted
away. I really enjoyed writing it, and I was delighted when it got good reviews.
Why did you decide to write Writing On Drugs?
I started thinking about this book several years ago, mainly because it seemed that there were very few
books which tried to get to grips with the whole question of drugs, what they are, and how they work -
in the brain, the economy, and the broader culture too. Many books on drugs are very
partisan, or else too sober and academic, and I suppose, like many writers, I simply tried to write the kind of book I wanted to
read on the subject. I was also very frustrated by the extraordinary hysteria and hypocrisy
surrounding the whole question of psychoactive drugs, and I wanted to develop a rather more dispassionate approach which
would highlight some of the absurdities of the current situation as well as looking at the
broad cultural influence of this handful of fascinating substances.
How did you research it?
I thought about this book and worked on it for so long that it's now quite difficult for me to unravel the whole
process of researching it. Of course I spent many hours in libraries, bookshops etc, but beyond this, it's
almost easier for me to say what I didn't do. For example, I didn't decide to write
the book and then go out and research it - I already felt very familiar with the material
by the time I really started work. And I certainly didn't interview people or go to clubs to see what it was like,
or do any of that kind of ethnographic research - I just wrote from what I felt I
knew.
Which writer was the most interesting to learn about?
I found Freud's cocaine use particularly interesting - it says a lot about his early work, as well as having some
intriguing implications for the later development of psychoanalysis. Robert Louis Stevenson was another
great discovery for me - the notion that the story of Jekyll and Hyde had emerged
from a cocaine binge makes so much sense of the story itself, as well as serving as a great example of the subtle ways in which
an illicit drug like cocaine has found its way into mainstream culture.
In general, do you think drugs help or hinder the creative
process?
The book is very ambivalent about this - the more I looked into the question, the more it seemed to me that
drugs can be said to both hinder and help. Many biographers of drug-using writers - De Quincey and
Coleridge, for example - are very keen to highlight the damaging effects of drugs,
but it is clearly more complex than this: without opium, Thomas De Quincey would
probably be quite unknown, and Coleridge might not have developed some of his most influential themes.
On the other hand, it is quite true that they might have produced some very different writing, as well as living
to ripe old ages and enjoying much happier lives!
Many writers have tried to capture those "not-quite-sleep,
not-quite-awake" dreams in their writing. How is this similar to using drugs while writing?
It's very similar - and what makes the use of certain drugs particularly interesting is that they can make these
twilight moments so explicit. I think many writers have used drugs in an effort to engineer such
half-life moments - which are also times when the sense of self is diminished and the
usual censoring processes are put in abeyance.
Which drugs do writers seem to gravitate towards and why?
The book concentrates on writers who have written on drugs in both senses of the words - about them and
also under their influence - although it is by no means an attempt to give some kind of
encyclopedic account of which writers have used which drugs. But it does seem clear that the opiates have
had a particular appeal for many writers, and this may have something to do with
their apparent ability to slow down time and spread thoughts out.
But of course all psychoactive substances temporarily change the way the brain
works, and it is fascinating to see their effects writ large, as it were, on the page. The
effects of drugs are notoriously difficult to identify and analyze, and what really interested me about writers
who have actually written under the influence of some substance was the possibility
that their work would yield some tangible material about their drugs' effects.
It certainly seems that certain drugs tend to accompany certain kinds of creativity - for example, ecstasy has
played a far greater role in music than it has in writing, and that, too, seems to say a lot about the
nature of the drug.
How have you sought publicity for your books, and which methods are most successful for
you?
I've never really looked for publicity - it always seems to come to me, and this isn't necessarily a good thing -
you can easily find yourself playing to other people's tunes. This is what I wish I'd
realized much earlier about the publishing business - how important it is to be in
control of what rapidly becomes your image, and how easy it is to lose control of
that. I suppose my best advice would be to find a publisher who really understands
you and your book - someone you can really trust to spread the word in the right places, and to
do so in the same spirit as you would do it yourself.
What should a first-time author look for in a book contract?
The serious answer has to be: get someone else - preferably an agent, or someone with some legal
training, or just an intelligent friend - to study the contract. But the other obvious questions are: how
much are they paying you, and (very important!) how many author's copies will you get?
This last point might seem flippant, but it is very galling to have to go out and pay
for a copy of your own book!
Anything further you'd like to add?
Only to wish the site's visitors all the best. Oh - and also to say that the only way to be a writer is to actually
write - I find it so easy to spend time thinking about it, deferring it, etc., but the important thing
is to do it!
You can order a copy of Writing on Drugs by clicking here.
