I've just discovered Charles Bukowski. What a find! His gravestone reads: "DON'T TRY", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a letter:
"Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or, if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it."
This 'laureate of American lowlife' was a prolific writer - he must've done a lot of waiting - some of which is available online at archive.org.
For those who're not into reading, DON'T TRY! There are plenty of audio clips on YouTube, including two films based on his writing:
"Factotum", adapted from Bukowski's 1975 novel of the same name
"Barfly", released in 1987, is a semi-autobiographical film
As he wrote, "Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat."
