[New-Poetry] so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski

[Anny Ballardini]

Sent to me by Anna Guterl:

        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.           




 

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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
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