The other night I watched the film Factotum, which is based on Charles Bukowski’s novel of the same name. The man in the film is Henry Chinasky – Bukowski’s alter ego – and he is a loser: he’s a dysfunctional drunk who can’t keep even a menial job and is shown hitting his girlfriend Jan and calling her a whore. How lovely.

Charles Bukowski

As a writer, Bukowski was tremendously prolific: he wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels in his 73 years. In Factotum he produces three short stories a week and submits them to magazines. He isn’t often lucky, at least at first. In any case, I wish I were as lucky as Bukowski all the time: “I could feel the words bubbling up inside me,” he wrote. He makes inspiration resemble hunger, or anger, or love.

When writing fiction and poetry, I sometimes experience the same luck – if that’s what you want to call it; I am definitely fortunate. Other times, of course, I hit a big writer’s-block wall. It is high, light yellow, and several feet thick. Oy.

I leave you with one of my favorite love poems (it seems awful at first, but just get to the ending). It was shocking to me that I could ever like something by Bukowski, as I once picked up his novel “Women” and it was so misogynistic that I couldn’t get past page 5. But this is different.

The best love poem I can write at the moment

listen, I told her
why don’t you stick your tongue up my ass

no, she said.

well, I said
if I stick my tongue up your ass first
then will you stick your tongue up my ass?

all right, she said.

I got my head down there and looked around
opened a section
then my tongue moved forward

not there, she said
ahhahahaha
not there, that’s not the right place

you women have more holes than Swiss cheese
I don’t want you to do it
why?

well, then I’ll have to do it back
and then at the next party you’ll tell people
I licked your ass with my tongue

suppose I promise not to tell?

you’ll get drunk, you’ll tell

o.k., I said
roll over
and I’ll stick it in the other place

she rolled over
and I stuck my tongue in that other place

we were in love

we were in love except with what I said at parties
and we were not in love
with each other’s ass holes

she wants me to write a love poem
but I think if people can’t love each other’s ass holes
and farts
and shits
and terrible parts
just like they love the good parts
that ain’t complete love

so, as far as love goes
as far as we have gone
this poem will have to do.

Now, something to depress those who have a tough time churning words out:

Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: “What do you do? How do you write, create?” You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.

And finally:

So you want to be a writer?

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.

If writing is a dominant part of your life – of your being – I recommend you take a look at Anne Lamott’s delightfully inspirational and honest Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Because I love quotes and these are jagged and beautiful, I leave you with some words by Lamott:

• “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

• “E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

• “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”