So you want to be a writer?

(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.

***  

I've seen this before as a young(er) writer-wannabe, and boy did it hit me hard. I didn't have any passion, I felt, and was only deluding myself based on some facility with the language and a love of reading. Now that I look at it again I become convinced that he was actually kidding, saying "Boo!" to newer writers while sending a slier wink/nudge to writers who have already earned their salt. Of course, I don't belong to the latter camp, not by a long shot, but still I feel somewhat relieved. 

Being a writer isn't always about just being the medium for almost supernatural inspiration (unless you were one of the authors of the Bible?), but also, sometimes, about working hard at this thing you want (desperately or not) to get right.

P.S. Second Bio 11 exam tomorrow. Too lazy to do any more studying. Maybe later again. I have to admit, though, I have never thought before that plants could be interesting. Just think about it, they're alive, but not sentient, or even mobile! Getting a closer look at all the processes involved and how their cells, tissues, and organs are organized just reinforces the creepiness, on some level I can't adequately explain right now, but has to do with the order emerging from the collusion of the (seemingly) blind, unintelligent behavior of tinier and tinier parts. (For all we know, Durkon could be right.)