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.

-------------------------

I am back, by the way.

I have started writing for last few months. And I mean "the real" writing. Short stories, plays, poems. Those months were quite unusual for me. Many things´ve changed. I have changed. They were very emotional months and maybe, as I started to feel different, I had to express myself in a different way as well. So I wrote all those things. And therefore I didn´t have any time or maybe any urge to continue in blogging.

But now things have calmed down, I have settled in a certain spot in my life, and I am back. I am still writing short stories, plays, and poems. But now I have my horizon broad enough to blog as well.

Sometimes you need to be pushed to do something you are just thinking of. Sometimes it´s the smallest event you can imagine. I was induced by a short e-mail by Chrissy. One part of it was a wonderful quote by G. B. Shaw: "Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." So true, so wonderful.

I have to catch up with so many amazing people here.