Bukowski: Straight, no chaser

So you want to be a writer
By Charles Bukowski

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.

* * *

This poem seems to be everywhere in the blogosphere. Tough love. It comes from the poetry collection "Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way" by the great literary lowlife Charles Bukowski.

When I started out, a couple of older writers told me the same. Basically, if you don't have to write, don't.

My first college writing teacher read through my clips as a favor. I wanted to know if I should continue as a writer.

I respected the guy and had decided to stay in or get out based on what he said. The professor handed back the articles, looked at me real screwy and said, "What else would you do?" As in, do you really think you have a choice?

I got to use that line a few times while I was teaching.

Bukowski died in 1994, so he never read a blog. If the old madman were still kicking he'd surely have one.

I think most bloggers could benefit from reading Bukowski, whose booze-fueled writing typically was barroom conversational, unfiltered, short and punchy, profane and usually a lot of fun -- although he could break your heart just like that. A poor man's Hemingway, perhaps. They both have about the same number of posthumous books, anyway.

When I started in with Bukowski about 30 years ago, he wasn't much of a name anywhere but in the underground. You had to buy these cool indie Black Sparrow books that felt like smuggled-in editions of "The Tropic of Cancer" or "Lolita." The ink came off on your hands and the words would rattle around in your brain.

Check out Bukowski via the following books, or just pick another one with a cool title:

• South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life


• The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses


• Post Office: A Novel


• Hollywood