Good morning to all of you my dear readers! Yes, it is Wednesday which means we are halfway to the weekend! What else could we want (other than for it to actually be the weekend)? On this fine day, I thought it would be fun to write about a writer who is often not well understood. Not that he needs to be, but I've found that he, as a writer, is very much an acquired taste that not many seek out. However, the few who do, are profoundly inspired by his honesty and crude humanity.
Charles Bukowski is an uncensored writer and poet who writes about life and how it is. I stumbled upon his works after having been inspired by a few of his quotes. Because he is rather crude and brutally honest in most of his works, he is obviously not a writer for everyone, but rather for himself. He offers up his life, and what he sees around him for what it really is. Sometimes he shows his success, and other times, he shows the utterly crushing poverty he endures to pursue his work as a writer. His passion for writing is more than that; it is a necessity. I feel that I can relate to Bukowski on the level of being a writer. The necessity to write is stronger than anything, and eventually, it must be put down on paper. In his poem
Neither Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane, he writes:
"sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way, hoping for a check from somewhere, dreaming of a letter from a great editor;"
There's this hope to be recognized, but knowing that ultimately, our words are for us. We read and we write to express something we cannot exactly say, but feel. We read and we write to be inspired and to inspire others. We read and we write to be transported to other places in which we feel more like ourselves than we do in our everyday lives. It's what's so maddening about it all to begin with.
But even with his inspirational quotes and his "real talk" about life, there is none of his works that have spoken to me more than his poem:
So you want to be a writer? You can read it below and I encourage you to, because if you're making excuses about your time or money (or the lack thereof), some of us don't have the luxury to debate it. Some of us can work around it, but the necessity and desire to write what has not be said already will be stronger than anything else. And that is what Bukowski continues to teach me, my dearest readers.
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 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 librairies of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
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
K.P.H.
