don’t do it

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It’s been one of those days or will be one of those days if this week is anything to go by. I have spent the last five days working on a new play and it is painfully slow work. One of those days when you wonder why you are doing this to yourself. Avoiding the play which refuses to be written, the lack of energy and ideas, I was wasting time on a writers forum and noticed this poem posted on a thread called ‘rejection and dejection’. Can you imagine any other hobby or job that people would willingly take up which has rejection and dejection discussion groups? 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.
From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski. THIS IS MY VERSION:so you want to be a writer don’t do it if you want a hobby lock yourself in a room and burn banknotes instead rather than write about life while yours disappears up your ever expanding arse as you take root to the chair that bears the indent of your squashed dreams don’t do it

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