Writing: The Madness Continues

Writing is a curse
Writing is a crime
Writing takes you to places
You know you can never find

You want to break the barriers
Set by rigid minds
Or then they might just be
The byproducts of time

But writing will make you want to
Reach beyond time
Beyond walls
Inside minds

That is when it becomes a curse
That is when they shine
The moons and shadows
Of unseen pasts

Graves ghosts knights
Believe it or not
They are all alive
You become a walking scene
Of war  rape  crime
Passion madness

Kindly acts
Walks in the park
Cloudy mornings

The testimony is yours
To give or to keep
They will always haunt you
Question you taunt you

The more you write
The more you see
The more you think
The less you see

The worry
The hurry
The agony
Of one story

One line
Few lines
Word by word


The madness continues

And a Retort

And then, while looking for some related  writings online, I discovered an interesting retort to Bukowski's spirited 'Don't Do It' -  On Writing. A valid argument eh?

Don't buy it. This is Charles Bukowski telling Charles Bukowski how to write like Charles Bukowski. He's guilty himself of all those sins he's admonishing you against as an aspiring writer. 

You might have a natural inborn talent as a writer - or, for that matter, as a plumber or a portrait painter - but that's not the way to bet. You can't rely on raw talent. It's nice to be a genius of course (did somebody else use that phrase?) but most people have to learn their trade or profession.

Thomas Gray spent a lifetime rewriting and polishing his poems. His "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" took him over 20 years. It is held by many to be the best poem in the language - not the most popular, a dubious honour held by Kipling's "If..." Anyway Gray's Elegy didn't just come bursting out of him: he ground it out over decades. He studied the poetry of the ancients, he wrote Horatian and Pindaric Odes, he learned his craft.

In fact, when you look at the lives of most poets closely, most of them learned their craft by studying other writers. There have been a few successful primitives, but most of their efforts are merely quaint. You can't just sit down and write, unless you're willing to judge what you've written harshly and compare your work with the work of others. 

Just as Science depends on the findings of previous scientists, on Newton and Faraday for instance, so poetry depends on the body of literature that has gone before it. You can't depart from the norm unless you understand thoroughly what the norm is. You can't be a rebel unless you know what you're rebelling against. 

Remember there is and was only one Charles Bukowki. Don't try to be him.

                                                                                                                         

Bukowski On Writing

I recently discovered this. Bukowsi on writing. I come back to it, every now and then. It provokes my creative impulse. Tells me to trust my instincts more. Also, it is beautifully narrated by Tom O' Bedlam. Enjoy!

So you want to be a writer

By 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.”