15 March 2010

The second best advice I ever got was from Tony Pierce.

And this is what he said:

"'now, if you were teaching creative writing,' he asked, 'what would you tell them?'


'I'd tell them to have an unhappy love affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth and to drink cheap wine, to keep switching the head of their bed from wall to wall and then I'd tell them to have another unhappy love affair and never to use a silk typewriter ribbon, avoid family picnics or being photographed in a rose garden; read Hemingway only once, skip Faulkner, ignore Gogol, stare at photos of Gertrude Stein, and read Sherwood Anderson in bed while eating Ritz crackers, realize that people who keep talking about sexual liberation are more frightened than you are. 


listen to E. Power Biggs work the organ on your radio while you're rolling Bull Durham in the dark in a strange town with one day left on the rent after having given up friends, relatives and jobs. 

never consider yourself superior and/or fair and never try to be. 

have another unhappy love affair. 

watch a fly on a summer curtain. 

never try to succeed. 

don't shoot pool. 

be righteously angry when you find your car has a flat tire. 

take vitamins but don't lift weights or jog. 
then after all this reverse the procedure. 

have a good love affair. 

and the thing you might learn is that nobody knows anything---not the State, nor the mice, the garden hose or the North Star. 

and if you ever catch me teaching a creative writing class and you read this back to me I'll give you a straight A right up the pickle barrel.'" - bukowski

And then he said,

"keep writing baby."

So I did.




1 comment:

  1. I like that Tony Pierce. And I like that you kept writing. Don't stop. And you aren't talking to the wall. Believe me, people are talking. They just don't talk to you. :)

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