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.

Autographed copy

he books I buy often are autographed copies, not on purpose do I choose these, I am mainly looking for titles. With that said, writers tend to get autographed copies, it is like the super book gift. The author with a stack of a hundred or more sat there and signed his or her name over and over.

Somehow having someones name on their own book is better. I don't believe that. How well read the words are, how they pounce on you, stay with you, when you recommend the book to someone else, that is better then a autograph.

I have one autographed book I took with me while my house burned. Once my kids and animals were out, the book I got smoke in my lungs for is a Kurt Vonnegut book. "Cats Cradle" - I trace the letters of his name, hastily scrawled. Perhaps thinking along the same lines 'Why do they want my name? Read the book that is the treat!'

In my day which is now, 2010, I am more then halfway done with a book of stories. Maybe once you have one done then the rest follow in quicker sequence. Birth isn't like that. Love isn't like that.

Books are somewhere else. Their own galaxy. This writing.com site tells me I haven't logged in, in 8 months. I always subscribed that writing was a solitary pursuit. That self aggrandizing and editing others works were somehow a selfish endeavor. It keeps the writer from the primary excuse for living, which is to experience and to write.

Worse

Monday, I'll know Monday what the story is medical wise. I know that I have lost alot of muscle since the big bad surgery in March, which supports the joints. I know but I hope. I want my uptight funny surgeon to tell me it is nothing. To march out of there with just a brace and no plans for PHYSICAL THERAPY. PT is a sentence, it is a sentence of daily pain and it is mental as well as physical. Physical therapists are chirpy creatures, their job is to cause you pain, be your Nirvanaesque cheerleader. You will make everyone else feel as ease, crack jokes. Smirk through the pain. You will go sit in your car afterwards and look at yourself in the rearview 'I am Rose Hill I am Rose Hill' - it means nothing ancestorially but I have always pretended I descended from good brave people with some kind of magic about them.

One thing or the other.

Sometimes it squeezes me that at 38 there isn't alot of time left. I look like a youngster but my insides age, right?

I love life to intently that I know something will come up for the winter, right? Where I can be gone after Christmas through Jan someplace with sun so the darkness doesn't return.

I need a webpage. Which, if you know me, I was a web designer from the ground up for 9 years, and to not have a website is sacrilege! Actually it is freeing. But I need to have a solid space on the web where I put solid pieces so people can see my work and get to know me.

All the stuff I write is personal, I don't know how to get that distance.

All this will come, I pray, I pray.

Better

Erase the aches gurl
We all wanna see you soar
To have to put on sunglasses
You shine so bright
Especially at night
Our own lightning bug

Suck it Jon Bon Jovi and the cyclops japanese woman

Jon Bon Jovi thought he was not going to be recognized at some odd mall and started going on about how Alice Cooper is not a innovator, I had enough of his fluff rock bullshit and thus began the mockey and musical education of Jon Bon Jovi and his hair.

Prior to that I was sitting with a very tall friend at a restaurant and this little ill behaved beast of a child cracked me in the head, purposely. I looked around and found the mother to be a cyclops. I didn't want her to think she was going to get a parenting pass just because she had one eye in the middle of her head. She didn't seem to keen on schooling her beast but they did help me find my other shoe.

All the while, I kept thinking 'why aren't I wearing a bra?'

Dreams people. You get to wake up.

My little dog pigged the electric blanket last night and I in my sleeping state kept moving as she kept getting closer as I do when my child is in bed, to give them more room. Woke up cold, aching.

I think only one knee can hurt at a time its a universal rule like a before e except after c.

Humility

Sunday paper will become my nemesis littering my bedroom in no time. I see it peeking out the bottom of a box of wet wipes (used for cleaning my cpap mask nightly) and everything else. Wet wipes are wonderful.

I made 3 phone calls today, which is rare, for someone who doesn't even answer the phone and usually doesn't know where her cellphone is. I like emails and text.

My brother delivered an invitation to his fiancees bridal shower. I think she has a few more scheduled for the love of God. I hate small talk with white trash strangers who smoke while holding their babies and chow down on shit food. I smile and nod and tell the babies that one day they will grow up and have the chance to escape.

I did. I escaped. Mostly.

I have never smoked, I can eat less and less. I am down to eggs, popcorn and liquid protein. I get an MRI on my knee in the afternoon. I called my GP and spoke to 3 people about a pelvic exam. My library fines were overdue and I paid them, finally. When I went to reserve books tonight I found that I couldn't. So I will need to go into the library and plead my case I guess. Some hold on my library card.

I am going to California and I have a few people to see, mostly though I will be on my own. Not sure how long I will last unless I find a place I really like to explore. Not hard to do. I'm alone all the time really. The only adult I talk to is the kids Father. Who isn't a conversationalist, is somewhere on the autism/aspergers spectrum.

My daughter smashed me in the face with my camera today. It hits me hard when she is so full of rage (this time because her Father told her that he would take her to the carnival, found out that it was closed and then thought it was open and then found out it was closed and told her all this throughout the day).

He will be leaving for 4 days next week after being gone on Friday. Work is always busy and his consulting business is always busy. Lydia spends most of her time with me anyway, its okay, because I am her go to parent, her primary caregiver, its just so hard some days. He wont even take his laptop to watch some Scooby Doo with her unless I say something. He thinks he is doing the noble thing by bringing in money and I think there is more to life then money, there are these days we never get back.

My mood is dipping its the pain medication, I take as little as possible but it just kicks me down. The Father of my kids wont understand that I have another torn meniscus and some kind of arthritis till he sees it in paper form. He is like that with everyone my son says. If he had come to the doctors appointment he would know. There are torn meniscus tests that can be performed in office, they are like being made a human pretzel and the sounds that come from my knee are serious and bleak.

So, knee is back to fuckled like last year. Need another esophagus opening as I am unable to eat just about everything and I have no one to help me out.

Sounds about right. My best friend is in Texas. I need solid help but it wont come. I will overtax my son but it will help him grow. I will walk on this gimp leg till it gives out and carry on. Hopefully sometime in there I will dream of good times and love and picking cherries at my Aunts house. Beating the birds to their sweetness.

I will complete the MT training and get a cert and a decent job. I will keep working on my book and will get some writing gigs. The Universe will shower me with blessings, I will pray nightly and Thank God for my life and my childrens lives.

And thats about all. Pain, lone ranger with glasses, dreaming, dreams and family bullshit.

Keep this in mind, people who seek change

For the Young Who Want To

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Talent is what they say you have after the novel is published and favorably reviewed. Beforehand what you have is a tedious delusion, a hobby like knitting. Work is what you have done after the play is produced and the audience claps. Before that friends keep asking when you are planning to go out and get a job. Genius is what they know you had after the third volume of remarkable poems. Earlier they accuse you of withdrawing, ask why you don't have a baby, call you a bum. The reason people want M.F.A.'s, take workshops with fancy names when all you can really learn is a few techniques, typing instructions and some- body else's mannerisms is that every artist lacks a license to hang on the wall like your optician, your vet proving you may be a clumsy sadist whose fillings fall into the stew but you're certified a dentist. The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. Marge Piercy