so you want to be a writer? (plus)

Two items. Charles Bukowski's "so you want to be a writer" and Bob Dylan's "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie."

A writer friend sent me the Bukowski poem last year and I printed it and taped it to my desk for a while. I'm not sure from which collection it comes.

The Dylan poem is the last track on The Bootleg Series Volume 1. I posted the YouTube clip only for the audio (it was the only place I could find it on-line). Apparently an artist has made a scrapbook inspired by the poem. But if you have a history of motion sickness then I recommend taking your dramamine before viewing, or just looking away from the computer screen and listening (or opening the link to the text at bobdylan.com and reading along).

___________________

by Charles Bukowski

so you want to be a writer?

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.

________________


by Bob Dylan

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie