So you wanna be a writer?

I could talk all day about writing, and about poetry, and what it really is.
I could spend all day talking about how Poetry is all about feeling, and how when you write a poem, It should be pure heart. You should just cut open your skin and let your blood flow out onto the paper.
I could spend all day talking about how much I hate Robert Frost and Ted Kooser. But they aren't worth the time, They aren't worth wasting my fingers on.
I could spend all day talking about real poets and real writers, I could spend all day talking about guys like Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Stephen Chbosky, Anis Mojgani, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jack Kerouac, Anthony Burgess, Jason Safran Foer, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, and Ayn Rand.

I could spend all day talking about writing and poetry,

BUT!!!

I would just be stealing every word and every thought from Bukowski. I could NEVER, do as good of a job as Bukowski does in his poem "So you want to be a writer?" But I doubt ANY of you have read any of his work. Do any of you even know who Charles Bukowski is? WHY? Because school doesn't teach you about good poets, and good writers, They tell you Mark Twain is god, and That Shakespeare is the best you can get, They say Willa Cather was a good writer, well school is wrong, and Davis, YOU ARE WRONG.
So if you haven't been introduced to good writing and good poetry, if you haven't read a poem that isn't about snow, or corn, or paths, or villages, or bullshit.
If you haven't heard of Bukowski. You're whole universe is about to be destroyed by the Death Star of poets.


Do you want to be a writer?
Well. . . The first step is to write.
Still can't do it?

then read this.

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.