what did you say?

Any violent reaction, people

So you want to be a writer?
--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 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.