I Wish I'd Written This

so you want to be a writer?

by Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

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.

Furthermore, there's no telling who will be chosen. They won't necessarily be admirable in any other way — for instance the dreadful man who penned the above lines! I think many of us might have found him reprehensible if we'd met him. He was often drunk, looked unkempt, and judging by an interview I once saw, was apparently a nasty drunk, verbally abusing and physically hitting out at his wife, albeit childishly and ineffectually. Not a pretty picture!

The Wikipedia article (click on the link on his name, above) describes the terrible childhood which formed this personality and led to his embrace of alcohol.

No doubt there was another side to him, as he had devoted friends and famous admirers. Above all, he wrote like a god. It clearly poured out of him "by itself" — sometimes with the help of his alter ego whom he named Henry Chinaski, plus a voice in Henry's head, known as Mr Bones.

He was a prolific writer and poet, as you can see at PoemHunter and his Amazon page. As well as poetry he wrote novels, short stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction.

For the rest of us, we may need to stare at the computer screen awhile, or rewrite something several times. Everyone in this community is familiar with writing to prompts rather than waiting for inspiration. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that. Even the greatest of us may resort to exercises to learn our craft. I don't think any means of courting the muse is guaranteed to produce either inferior or superior poetry. 

I like to think he's talking about the overall necessity, that compulsion we have to spend our lives in this way, rather than the urgency of expression in any particular moment.

Still, how wonderful those moments when the muse arrives unbidden, when we are taken over and the poetry writes us!  Isn't it what we live for?

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).