Don’t Try
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 is "so you want to be a writer?" by Charles Bukowski. I don't agree with everything the man ever wrote - it really isn't possible for any two human beings to agree on everything, anyway - but this... I liked this a lot, the dig at self-love notwithstanding. I find a lot of similarities between me and him. I'm not alcohol or sex-crazed but I've felt many of the things he wrote touch my soul. And that's what writing is about, anyway. Pulling things out from the depth, whether people notice or not.
And it makes even more sense, the words on his tombstone being "don't try". When I look at it, I see it as him saying people ought to move towards what serves them, what flows in them, what they're passionate about and stop forcing everything. Forcing themselves to like the books and movies and people and lives that they feel they should like, forcing themselves to pretend.
And we all do. We all learn there is a way we should act, no matter how different it is for each of us - until we slowly realise that there was never any need.
All the world is a stage. It needs less puppets. And sometimes, giving up is the only way to find out what actually matters. I don't know exactly why I found myself drawn to being a writer - or why it comes over and over again, even when I have such a case of writer's block that I assume my gift of madness has finally been whisked away by the gods. But I am a writer. And I write. And that is enough.
Also... I recommend Big Magic by Harper Collins. She says a lot of stuff I do not remember right now. Very interesting mind she has and very cool experiences, made me smile cos it's probably the first book on passion and creativity that I have ever (accidentally) read.