To Be a Writer

“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.”
— Charles Bukowski

I read this quote today, posted by a good friend of mine from High School. He, like myself, strives to be a writer, though he as a fiction writer. (He's such a passionate writer, and I love and respect him as the writer and wonderful human being that he is. I'll post about him sometime I'm sure.) I found this quote SO disheartening as a person who is interested in writing. I have felt that drive to write before. I've been so psyched out of my mind about an idea that I felt it bursting from me even as I wrote it. I felt like I was painting, not writing, because I wrote so fast. I've felt the desire to mentally pursue characters, so think of their back stories, their hopes, their dreams, every single aspect of their lives. Sometimes I just understood a situation. I didn't create it, I understood it. I had become so wholeheartedly invested in this situation, this skit or short story, that I knew every aspect of it. I could see it through each person's eyes, and knew why it was funny, or sad, or strange, or whatever the desired tone was. I've comprehended it on such an intellectual level that, ironically, I can't find words to describe it. The quote does convey the feeling quite well though.


But I haven't felt like that since I got out of my creative writing class my senior year of High school. Granted, that was only 8 months ago, and it hadn't struck me until I read this. I haven't felt so impassioned to write, haven't felt that burning fire, that instinctual drive, since I left that class. And yet I claim that I want to do it for a living? How can I expect to do so when I can't even write when I'm not being graded. I don't get inspired when there's nothing on the line. I can't perform when I don't have anything to lose. I need stakes. I need a deadline. I need a reason to write other than self motivation. Does that make me a good writer or a bad one? I can't think of anything when I'm not being externally motivated by something.

But wait. Aren't I feeling the fire now? Am I not writing because a quote moved me to writing? I've been inspired by this quote. The sun inside of me is indeed burning my gut because of this quote. It's relit a fire that for many months has laid dormant. I want to write. A scene, a skit, a short story, a prose, anything, really. I want to write out ideas. I want to correct my stupid grammar mistakes I should not have made, but did because I was so terribly excited about an idea that I had to rush to get it out of my mind before I lost it. Though I suppose I was still inspired externally. I don't know.

Maybe I should start building my cardboard shanty now, because I haven't the faintest idea what the hell I'm doing with my future.