Having completed two books
now, with several more fairly close to completion (see here
for more detail), I’ve been flitting around each of them for the past two
months, trying to decide (alongside fervent prayer, of course) which one I
should focus on next. It’s fair to say, the work on these books isn’t coming as
easy as it did on the first two – the well of passion has dried up slightly on
one or two of them.
And then, today, I stumbled upon this great poem by Charles Bukowski, called So You Want To Be A Writer – and I found he gets it just right, as he alerted in me a salutary reminder of how working on a book should feel. When you’re hot on topic, the creativity (either writing or editing) is flowing out, and you’re producing the best stuff that’s inside you; you’ll feel it “come bursting out of you, it’ll be “unasked out of your heart”, and it will “come out of your soul like a rocket” where the “sun inside you is burning your gut”.
Yes, that’s how you know what you should be prioritising – a really timely reminder as I press forward and try to find more of the sun inside me.
Here is the poem in full (in its original format). Hope it helps, fellow writers:
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.
