"

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.

"

So you want to be a writer - Charles Bukowski (via theglasschild)

Not nearly as crazy as I thought it’d look. I like it, but I’m a little disappointed it’s not more out there.

I keep forgetting to put money in my checking account because I have like one dollar in there..

But I’m afraid if I do I’ll either spend too much money on a) food, or b) shoes.

Watch the skinny dipping episode of The Bachelor or do homework.

Sometimes life hands you choices that aren’t hard at all.

The Bright Eyes lyric, “let the poets cry themselves to sleep” has always made so much sense to me because sometimes I feel so heavy with every emotion imaginable, so full of thoughts and bursting with opinions that it’s hard not to get emotional sometimes.

To feel so deeply just because of a few words someone put together, because of some feelings you wrote down and crafted into something beautiful where maybe there was once pain, that is a terrifyingly emotional process, and as much as I am afraid of emotion, I am willing to go through that pain because I need to let it out somehow.

Some people sing, some people dance, paint, or run. I write because I couldn’t live without being able to verbalize all of the shit within me.

To feel nothing, to be numb, would be such an empty existence.

"That’s the problem with drinking. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."

Charles Bukowski (via lightenedheart)

My mama made smiley heart Valentines day cookies.

notforzulu:

Can I just say that I hate being called “Baby,” “Babe,” or any other goddamned pet name by a guy?

The easiest way to guarantee my pants are staying on is to call me by something other than my name. Save endearments for your family. 

^co-sign

(Source: Flickr / manysmallguesses)

Sometimes when I tell my dad goodnight he wishes me the same, and then he tells me he’ll miss me. 

I think that is the sweetest response. The word “sweet” doesn’t even do it justice. It just amazes me when he does things that make me realize how much I love him, more than I already do. 

Sometimes words escape me and I am always astonished at how Bukowski just had it all figured out.