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so you want to be a writer?

errtu2 · 2008-07-30T07:37:29Z

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.

Wolfdaemon

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Thu Jan 07, 2010 5:06 pm

Wolfdaemon says... · Thu Jan 07, 2010 5:06 pm

great advice! write for yourself! lol, i have that problem, i try and write for my sister or brother or readers, but i want to make the perfect book for ME!

You do well to believe in God. Satan also believes...and trembles.James 2:19
http://dragcave.net/user/Roma-Gypsy
^ you should so click this....

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Lebensborn

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Mon Nov 11, 2013 6:16 pm

Lebensborn says... · Mon Nov 11, 2013 6:16 pm

I searched for Bukowski in the engine and came upon this thread. A lot of people, who perhaps are not familiar with Bukowski's work, seem to think that this is his set of "tips" for the aspiring writer.

I believe that, like so many other works of Bukowski, this is a memo to himself; how to be the best he can be. And the methods by which he claim are not to be applied to the reader, but to himself.

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A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
— Roald Dahl

so you want to be a writer?

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