So You Want To Be A Writer: Charles Bukowski

If it doesn't '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.