Inspiration?

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.

 

 

The Lunacy of Language

All hail my fellow wordsmiths!

 

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,

 But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.

 One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,

 Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

 You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,

 Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

 

 If the plural of man is always called men,

 Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

 If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,

 And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

 If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,

 Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

 

 Then one may be that, and three would be those,

 Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,

 And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

 We speak of a brother and also of brethren,

 But though we say mother, we never say methren.

 Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,

 But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

 

 Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

 There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;

 Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

 English muffins weren't invented in England .

 

 We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,

 We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,

 And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

 And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing,

 Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

 Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?

 If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,

 What do you call it?

 

 If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

 If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

 

 Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English

 Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

 In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

 

 We ship by truck but send cargo by ship...

 We have noses that run and feet that smell.

 We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

 And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,

 While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

 

 You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language

 In which your house can burn up as it burns down,

 In which you fill in a form by filling it out,

 And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

 

 Oh well, we can all shake our heads as we nod in agreement.

 

From The Writer’s Platform (a Facebook page)