I know that I said my third post was going to be on automation or the like. Trust me, I can’t wait to get into that shit. Think of this more as a bonus post than me failing to deliver on that one; I will talk about automation and the rise of the robots in due time. For now, I really just felt like writing about some of the stuff I was thinking about on my drive home today, and it’s my blog so I’m going to write about whatever I feel like.
I was thinking about how easy it is to self-sabotage. I was thinking about how I’m struggling with my writing right now but the most proactive course of action would be to just force myself to sit down in front of my laptop in front of the stories I’m supposed to be working on and just put words on the page until it works. Write it and rewrite it until it’s done.
But, I’m haunted by the Charles Bukowski poem “So You Want to Be a Writer”. It goes like this:
“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.”
Basically, it’s all about how you should only write if the words you want to write pretty much write themselves, i.e. if they come “bursting out of you”. According to Bukowski, you shouldn’t ever write if it’s a challenge for you or if you have to rely on discipline rather than a well of inspiration.
He talks about how if you have to spend hours staring at the screen just to make the words come forth then you shouldn’t even bother. Well, this is all well and good to say and while I agree with some of the things Bukowski says, I think that his, or at least his narrator’s, is a grossly oversimplified view and naïve view of writing. No, I’ve never sat and stared at a blank screen for hours or hunched over a goddamned typewriter for an eternity trying to find the words, but damned if it hasn’t felt like it.
Where Bukowski says it shouldn’t feel like work and that if it’s hard even thinking about it then you aren’t worthy, I can help but think who made him the be-all authority and what the fuck does he know anyways? Yes, sometimes it comes so easily, it flows so seamlessly, and the words fall from your hands like a load of bricks that is so heavy you couldn’t carry it another step. But it’s not always like this. Sometimes it feels like the elephant in the room, it is an unmoveable rock, or you are Atlas and the weight of it is that of the world and something you can hardly bear on your shoulder for another moment.
It should just come roaring out of you, and it may never. It’s a calling, it’s something in you or it isn’t. I can’t disagree with Mr. Bukowski here, but if a person never had to work through a time when the words didn’t fall just like he wanted them, if none of his works were ever re-written more than once, if he constantly and effortlessly produced a flawless stream of prose with every stroke of his fingers on the keys, then he is like no writer I have ever known and none that shall ever be.
Bukowski’s work is one of passion and raw untamed creative zeal, the things he speaks of are the good days in the creative process. It’s those days that you hold dear and remember when the well of inspiration dries up, because that well dries up for every artist.
It’s when inspiration is in short supply that discipline must carry the load. In my experience –and the experience of many writers who are much better at their craft than I– if you are constantly ready for the muse to show up, eventually you will be there when she does. So that’s what I’m doing now, I’m writing. I’m here at my desk and I’m waiting for the muse.
So, that’s a thing. Inspiration, discipline, and trying to avoid the paths of overthinking and self-sabotage. It’s funny how in your day it seems like you have so much time, until you don’t anymore. I wonder if that’s how it is in life? When we look back over the breadth of our days do we think, God, I thought I’d have more time to really do it like I wanted? I hope not, I mean, I think you can never do all you want to do, but if you make a constant effort, then yah, I think you can accept the progress you make for what it is. Maybe you’ll never make it to Carnegie hall, but damned if you don’t sing on a stage or two on the way there.
Aristotle said that man is what he continually did, excellence is therefore a habit and not an act. I think that’s how it works with any of the things we want to be or the qualities we want to have, and I think we know it. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master anything, and that’s a lot of time just hammering away. Sometimes inspiration will show up, and the muse will take your hand and show you where to go. Lord knows she’s taken me for a few walks in the garden, but sometimes there isn’t a path in life, and that’s when we have to look within and forge our own way.
It doesn’t really matter how far we get, as long as the journey gets its due time and effort. How far we go is not as important as the impact that the experience has on us. For me, I know that I want to write, and instead of avoiding those ends or overthinking this whole process, I’m just going to. Even in the course of writing this post I almost didn’t finish it, I nearly scrapped it, I thought about how dumb it is or how I should post it as a persuasive essay instead. That’s when it occurred to me though, this is why I’m blogging. I’m doing this thing so I can write stuff like this, it doesn’t have to be a formal essay, it can just be a post about what I thought about today. This is what I thought about today as I drove home, I thought about self-sabotage and all the baggage that goes with it.
Bloody Well Write 