Wherever You Are, Just Write

© Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock.com

Writing in public emboldens the soul. Anyone can sit in the quiet of their room, in solitude, blinds drawn, candles lit, the world shut out, summoning an inner life and inner world. But take yourself out of that room, sit yourself down in a cafe, train, plane, whatever. Write then, and see where it takes you. 

Write knowing that anyone can look over your shoulder and read the imperfect words you’ve written. Write knowing they may think what you have written is utter garbage. Or maybe they’ll think your work is brilliant.

Write when there are people talking around you, or write with headphones clamped over your ears to shut out their noise. Write when people jostle you with their elbows and their clumsiness.

Write on a bus or a train when you are squished between two large people and can barely move. Write not only when it is difficult to write but because it is difficult to write.

Write as if you know something and they do not. Because the secret is you see worlds and people and know stories they can’t imagine.

There are no perfect conditions for writing. Perhaps there are ways you can trick yourself into a ritual for writing but don’t convince yourself you cannot create if you don't follow a ritual. Find the real writer in you, the one that needs no bullshit to create, the one who can write anywhere, anyway, anyhow.

Hell, why am I saying this. Charles Bukowski said it a hundred times better in ‘air and light and space’. I salute you, Chuck B. I salute you.

air and light and time and space

"–you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,
something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create." 

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire. 

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for. 

© Charles Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press