To write or not to write - It ain't a question no more..

A few minutes back, a friend introduced me to a treasure....the works of Henry Charles Bukowski. A poet that I had not heard of, but a man after my own heart. Below is a poem of his that seems as if it came straight from my head:

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.
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And if there ever was any doubt in my head, I now know for sure that I was born to write. Because anything that happens in my life, the first thing that comes to my head is - "How will I write about this, what tone will I take...". Its like the words are dying to come out...

The Husband sometimes kids (or maybe not) that if I talked aloud whatever I write, I would be a very talkative person...more social as well....words on a paper (or now a keyboard thanks to modern science) express more than I will ever say out loud. Now I know its not strange, it just makes me who I am...