so you want to be a writer?
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
–Charles Bukowski
This poem feels like that call to action during a season when the hungry soul’s cry isn’t quite as clear and crystalline. My time in the studio has been trimmed, that’s true. But it is still there, that stark yelp that Bukowski captures so so well. This poem makes me want to go out and howl at the moon.
Not me, Deborah! I don’t need to howl at the moon to know I’m doing something that is a true and just expression of my nature — even if at times it feels like breaking stones. And, if I might correct Bukowski —
If you have to get drunk to do it,
enable it on the natch before you lecture others,
or don’t do it.
That’s my E!
Recently read one of Bukowski’s letters railing against writing “programs”. His advice, like the advice given to me years ago by a mentor, was simple – if you want to write, then write.
You can’t *not* write – it finds its way. The words will out.
Yummy poem. I appreciate the call-to-action aspect! It reminds me of Rilke’s advice, “Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of the night: Must I write?”
Lazarusdodge and Mockingbird, thank you for such informed additions to this topic. I was not familiar with either Bukowski’s quote or that of Rilke. Valuable contributions, both.
If you don’t mind my taking up yet more space, I found the quotes I was looking for. This is from “Reach For The Sun”, a book of Bukowski’s collected letters:
“I put the words down and I forget them. Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was and I said, ‘Don’t try.’ That fits the writing too. I don’t try, I just type, and if I say any more that that, I’m trying.
Like right now I’m drinking this Concannon petite sirah, vintage 1976 and listening to classical music on the radio and I’ve got this capitalistic silly itch to shape a poem or something like that”
– To Joe Stapen, December 28, 1980
“How can I tell anybody how to write? Most of the time when I sit down at this machine I don’t know what the fuck’s coming out…We don’t need poetry writing seminars, we need poetry writers; we don’t need discussions, we need a few people hacking it out, typing, getting it down. And we need less snobbery and less poetry gang-factions.”
– To Joe Stapen, August 8, 1981
It’s why I’ve been reading him for years….
L, thank you, thank you for these excellent quotes. I particularly love this sentiment: “We need less snobbery and less poetry gang-factions.”