Charles Bukowski: So you want to be a writer?

Charles Bukowski: So you want to be a writer?(poets.org)

60 points by lujz 16 years ago | 19 comments

dalton 16 years ago |

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.

RyanMcGreal 16 years ago |

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 16 years ago | |

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."

pigbucket 16 years ago | |

I agree with every word of this, despite Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson saying: "I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech."

_pius 16 years ago |

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 16 years ago | |

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.

10ren 16 years ago |

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...

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

tmsh 16 years ago |

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.

Jun8 16 years ago |

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.

andrewvc 16 years ago |

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

tptacek 16 years ago |

Try replacing "writer" with "startup founder".

eavc 16 years ago |

Many great writers had to labor over their writing.

Dove 16 years ago |

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)

hernan7 16 years ago |