when the muse writes with your pen

If I said I agreed with this poem, I would be out of business. So I am not telling but I cant not share it either.

So do 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.

On a writers block

No, Sir, no maam. Don't bother me today. Go get lost.

Yes, I say I am a writer, a writer I definitely am. I love to write and I hate to say this. Empty my pockets, you wont get no words.

I am falling in my own black hole, and my eyes are squeezed shut. You expect me to sing and dance? Then why the hell should I write?

I write when I feel like it. I write out of freedom. I write to shine my sword. I write to win the world.

My words are precious stones. They are more potent than semen. Why should I throw them in the gutter?

For right now, I am sitting in the gutter, there is nothing but darkness inside, and my eyes are squeezed shut.

Don't you dare tell me to write. Don't you dare hand me a pen. Don't even try to show me an empty page. Can't you smell the gutter that stinks? My hands are busy, holding my nose.

If you care, switch on the telly. If you care, light me a cigarette. If you love me, show me the stars. Take me for a long drive. Take me to Paris.

In Paris I know a shrink. Only he can cure my writer's block.

In good company

Finally, I found something in common with an uncommon writer, Salman Rushdie

The author remarks,

"There's a writing self which is not quite your ordinary social self and which you don't really have access to except at the moment when you're writing, and certainly in my view, I think of that as my best self," he said. "To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else."

-- as quoted at close of yesterday's New York Times article, Now He's Only Hunted by Cameras