so you want to be a writer?

Doug and I were driving home from running errands this afternoon, and this popped up in my Facebook feed. I've seen it before, but it's the kind of thing you can't see, or read, often enough. I read it to myself twice. No emotional reaction. And then I read it out loud to Doug. I made it all the way to "unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket . . ." before I dissolved into tears. "Wow," he said. "That really affected you." Yes, it did. Surprisingly. 

Writing isn't something I can stop doing. Maybe someday, but right now I cannot. If I don't do it, I feel the loss of it. I love it. Every painful, agonizing minute of it . . . more than just about anything.

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.

—Charles Bukowski, 1920–1994