My most favourite blogger of all time is my long time blog pal Janelle, who lives in Tanzania and writes a beautiful blog called Ngorobob House: Life From The Hill. She and I are blogging dinosaurs now, but through the years, she has helped me more than she will ever know through many crises. We are destined to meet one day. Don’t know where, don’t know when, but one of her recent posts hit a raw nerve with me. It’s all about the desire to write and how, very often your urges and ability to pour out your heart can get stuck. For me, it’s always in there, this urge to spill my thoughts out onto a page, but of late, it’s been even more difficult than usual to write honestly. For lots of reasons.
Charles Bukowski has recently put her off. “He said that if you have to sit for hours hunched over your desk or your typewriter, don’t do it. The words should come flying out, like birds. If they don’t, don’t do it”.
So, she’s listening to him and isn’t going to write “until the words come tumbling out, all enthusiastically, crowding to escape, be the first in line, to roost idly, perfectly and beautifully on the page” whereas I am trying to write through it. Words never fly out of me like birds mind you – they don’t flutter and land beautifully on the page. They just plonk themselves down. I am not a poet like she is, so I don’t mind my words being boring in the process. Still, I am definitely waiting for a little bit of bravery to come my way in order to write about some of the things that I truly want to say. Perhaps the thing is that I don’t feel the “roar” at the moment…but it’s coming back. Slowly but surely.
She’s posted Bukowski’s poem “So You Want To Be A Writer”. I have asked her permission to do the same. It’s brilliant…and a fantastic summary of what it truly means to be a writer. That you do it because you have to, regardless of everyone else, because it’s just a given that it needs to come out and be heard. Or not heard. Either way, it doesn’t matter. It’s not for anyone else…
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
janelle
June 8, 2015XXXX
Dumdad
June 9, 2015The only thing roaring out of Bukowski is bullshit. Writing is about writing and then honing that writing. So, rewrite and rewrite until you’re satisfied. I’ve stopped blogging to write a novel (my third one, so perhaps third time lucky?) and there are days when I just have to mechanically tap out words otherwise I wouldn’t start at all and just play Candy Crush or whatever. Then some days it does flow. No day is the same.
I’ve been a reporter/sub-editor all my life and no story just tumbles out. In the old days a reporter would write a story and the sub would smooth it out, correct errors etc. There are few rewrite men on newspapers nowadays and it shows.
Khaled Hosseini (check out his novels) said: “Writing for me is largely about rewriting.”
Hear, hear.
Of course, you first have to create something in order to rewrite. That’s the toughest bit!
Good luck!
Family Affairs
June 9, 2015Aha – well that’s quite reassuring to know that there are other ways…everyone I guess is different in the way that they write…I love Khaled Hosseini – but the rewriting is SO TEDIOUS..Lx
Alice Cullerne Bown
July 9, 2015I think the poem sets the bar incredibly high. I’m all for throwing words on the page and then sorting them out in the edit or, more realistically, in several edits. Please don’t wait for a roar – I want to read your story!
Family Affairs
July 10, 2015OK TRYING!! Thanks Alice xx