Tuesday

So You Want To Be A Writer

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Kind

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 haveyawned themselves to sleepover your kind
Don't add to that
Don't do it
Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket
Unless being still woulddrive you to madness orsuicide 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 byitself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you
There is no other way
And there never was
  • Take it to heart and you can't go wrong!

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