

Charles Bukowski: So you want to be a writer? - lujz
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16549

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dalton
That is an excellent poem, and I remember reading it before I was familiar
with his work.

Now that I have actually read several of his books, I see how he was sort of a
disaster as a human being:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski>

I sort of have to agree with Modest Mouse on this one. Lyrics from the song
Bukowski:

"Woke up this morning and it seemed to me, that every night

turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski.

And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.

But God who'd wanna be?

God who'd wanna be such an asshole?

God who'd wanna be?

God who'd wanna be such an asshole?"

Not trying to take away from the poem, just trying to make the point that
Bukowski was way more interested in writing things that make him seem like a
"badass misunderstood writer who Keeps It Real unlike all of these other
phonies who claim to be writers" than anything else.

Sound like any company founder you know?

Yet another datapoint that being someone who makes great art, and being
someone you would want to be roommates with/married to, are not exactly
related.

See Also: Hunter S. Thompson.

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RyanMcGreal
At the risk of disagreeing with the great Charles Bukowski, this is defeatist
bullshit. I doubt there's a writer alive who has never had to struggle to put
words on the page; who hasn't had to edit and revise and throw out and rewrite
to produce something worth reading; who hasn't plodded through the writing
process thinking "This is rubbish" only to go back and look over it and
realize that it has added up to something good.

Writing is _hard_. There's no need to make it harder by instilling a false,
romantic sense that writing which doesn't spring fully formed from the
writer's forehead isn't worth putting onto the page.

~~~
hugh3
A contrasting perspective from Douglas Adams: "Writing is easy. All you have
to do is stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds."

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_pius
IIRC, if you read _Women_ , you'll see a passage where Bukowski essentially
clarifies this piece. He'd get so many wannabe writers asking him for advice
that he'd tell them to just give it up. If they didn't, they were real
writers. If they gave up just because some old prick told them to, well ...

~~~
hugh3
That's pretty much the same advice I give to anyone who asks me whether they
should do a PhD. If you need to ask, the answer is no.

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10ren
Maybe he's getting at the idea that you need to have inspiration - in other
words, you first need to have something to say, rather than to speak in order
to have something to say.

I love this writer's saying: _inspiration strikes he who is at the typewriter_
, meaning that although you cannot force inspiration, you can create
conditions for it. Maybe that's what he means when Bukowski says _then wait
patiently._

Although my inspirations tend to come in the shower or walking in the park on
a crisp autumn morning or sitting in a cafe, I do need to prepare myself - by
immersing myself in the material, then asking a question of silence, instead
of presuming the answer. IANAM, but I love the approach of Poincaré: _It is by
logic we prove, it is by intuition that we invent._ [http://www-groups.dcs.st-
and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Poin...](http://www-groups.dcs.st-
and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Poincare.html)

He also says, in agreement with Bukowski: _Logic, therefore, remains barren
unless fertilised by intuition._

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Jun8
A poem of his that I think better conveys the idea is "air and light and time
and space" (<http://www.organicmechanic.org/2005/04/three-by-bukowski/>)

"baby, air and light and time and space

have noth­ing to do with it

and don’t cre­ate any­thing

except maybe a longer life to find

new excuses

for."

Now, people who have never tried their hands at writing (or any other tough
creation process) should know that this is now always true. There are writers
who just sit and go in one sitting (I had read that Gabriel García Márquez
wrote _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ nonstop, holed up in his study), but
this is rather rare. Most writers go through countless revisions, reversal,
etc.

However, the grand feeling of " _this_ is the thing I have to do in life", of
course, has to be there.

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tmsh
Seems like more of an active/passive thing.

 _Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: "What do you do? How do you
write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important:
not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if
nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You
wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out
and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski> (via dalton)

It's an old idea. Someone at TED mentioned the muses not too long ago. Same
idea. I agree with him in that sense, but, generally speaking, that doesn't
mean you can't be very active preparing. Often, that's how I approach
development.

------
andrewvc
Interesting, however, it reminds me of an interview I saw of outsider
independent filmmaker Errol Morris on 60 minutes[1]. When asked if he wishes
he could win an Oscar for his work, he never has, Morris quickly replied 'of
course', and went on to explain that wanting recognition is part of being an
artist.

Some outsiders rationalize their outsider status as being a choice, when they
have none. I don't claim to have a window into Bukowski's head, but as Morris
would say, sometimes those around us see us more clearly than we see
ourselves.

1\. <http://www.errolmorris.com/content/60minII.html>

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tptacek
Try replacing "writer" with "startup founder".

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eavc
Many great writers had to labor over their writing.

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swombat
_tongue-in-cheek_

Fuck him. Who is he to tell other people not to write? He's just a writer.

If you want to be a writer, do it.

~~~
derefr
The _point_ is that, if hearing someone tell you that you shouldn't write is
enough to make you stop—then you probably shouldn't write. Your words will be
meek, and half-offered, standing in the doorway waiting to be invited in. If
_you_ , as a writer, are the one thinking "Fuck him!"—then you have a voice.

------
Dove
Counterpoint: An author once said to Winston Churchill that he never wrote
unless the mood came upon him, but he replied to him that he would never
achieve anything if he did so. "Lock yourself in your study from nine to one
and make yourself write" he said. "Prod yourself, kick yourself, because this
is the only way."

(From elsewhere on the internet)

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hernan7
See also: Spark

<http://patriciagomes0.tripod.com/id8.html>

(Sorry, that's the best 'net version I was able to found).

    
    
       ...save the tiniest
       bit.
       it needn't be much, just a spark.
       a spark can set a whole forest on
       fire.

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balding_n_tired
"if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it."

Pick up a variorum Yeats some time and see how much he rewrote--final version
"The Lament of the Old Pensioner" looks very little like the original.

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mvp
Writing is a practical necessity. Like every other skill it does improve with
practice. So advising people who are not good at it to not do it is wrong.

~~~
derefr
You're talking about writing as communication (i.e. essaying); he's talking
about writing as aesthetic expression (i.e. fiction and poetry writing.)

The difference between the two is the difference between talking and singing:
everyone needs to learn to talk; not everyone should attempt to get in front
of a microphone (however much they enjoy doing it in the shower.)

