so you want to be a writer?

Charles Bukowski, 1920 - 1994

  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.

From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski.