Charles Bukowski was the barstool poet for the working class the type of guy who’d write a masterpiece on a bar napkin only to use it minutes later to soak up spilled beer.
He didn’t write for the literary elite; he wrote for the regulars, the people with 9-to-5 jobs who drank too much on the weekends. While everyone else spent their time trying to sound intellectual and tooting their own horns about how smart they were, Bukowski had a simpler philosophy: Don’t Try.
It sounds like a white flag of surrender, but it cuts much deeper than that. In a letter to a publisher, Bukowski explained he wasn’t “passionate” about writing the way folks are about woodworking or pickleball; it was simply something he had to do. He was possessed by it. He didn’t choose writing; writing chose him kind of like jury duty, but with worse pay and more hangovers. He believed your calling would come to you naturally; you don’t force it.
The Cult of Productivity vs. The Raw Word
In today’s day and age, with all our productivity apps, mood boards, and stupid morning affirmations, Charles is somewhere in a corner with a cheap beer laughing at us. He was of the mind that if words weren’t crawling out of your throat looking for the page, maybe they weren’t worth writing. I feel that in today’s world, people are more copywriters than poets writing for marketing rather than creative expression. That’s fine, everyone’s gotta pay the bills but let’s not confuse a content creation calendar with the actual creative process.
“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it.”
Why This Philosophy Is Problematic (And Also Not)
Sure, “writing chose me” sounds deep, but it’s got more survivorship bias than a lottery winner telling you to “just believe in yourself.” There are thousands of “Bukowskis” in this world with crumpled notepads and thousands of words written on paper that people will never see. But you know what Bukowski did between moments of divine inspiration? He revised. He submitted manuscripts. He dealt with stacks of rejection letters. So, what I’m saying is: He fucking tried. This is the vital message people often misconstrue.
The Discipline of the Gym Bro
Mock the gym bros all you want with their intense meal preps, obscure workout plans, and productivity hacks but they have something you may not: structure. Surprise, surprise: sometimes structure helps. We can’t all sit around and wait for a creative muse to show up fashionably late while we’re hunched over a barstool. Most of us have bigger priorities the 9-to-5 to pay the bills, kids, and real life. That “drifter” lifestyle doesn’t exist for us. But what we can do is stay consistent. The truth is, the biggest reason for Bukowski’s success wasn’t “not trying,” but being persistent.
The Bottom Line
Schedule your creative muse. Work with your schedule to make sure you fit it in the same way a gym bro never misses a day at the rack. By doing that, you’ll truly begin to understand Bukowski’s philosophy.
THIS IS GREAT