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.
You can find this poem in Bukowski’s great collection—Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems
Bukowski takes a stand against poetic dilettantes. But not everyone writes like he did, or would want to. People write for many reasons not included in this vision of writing as desperation. First thought, best thought, etc. I agree there’s a lot of bad literature being produced—poetry in particular—usually out of a misapprehension of what actually constitutes good writing. However, one has to suck as a writer for a long time before it’s worth being read. This is all part of the writer’s passionate journey, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Everyone, including Bukowski, starts somewhere.
a rocket……
murderous impulses…
sun inside you ...
and you might get the calling
He unromanticizes writing whilst romanticizing writing. Self-referentially refuting and confirming the holiness of the vocation.