Nobody becomes a good writer for copying off someone else’ style. Use them as influences, yeah, but don’t copy off them. How old are you? 10? Is this a spelling test in primary school? No. It’s life. And if you’re a writer, excuse how pretentiousness and ugly this may sound, but writing is your life. Your own life. Not someone else’s. You should want to write about your experiences in your own way without dipping into the nearest book to pinch a phrase, because that’s why you’re a shit writer. Make your own phrases up. Doesn’t matter how bad you think they may sound. At least they’re your own. And grow up. Stop pretending to be someone you’re not and exit the Bukowski room and take that clown wig off. It’s too crowded. And life isn’t a fancy dress party. Unless you’re Paloma Faith.

So all of these Bukowski wannabes fling their pretentious crap about like piss-filled-bottles at festivals.  You wanna stamp on their toes, right? You want them to be subjected to Gordon Ramsay’s breath 24/7. All of these fake Bukowski’s should join the mountain of big, sweaty, dirty bullshit that’s been piled upon by too much bullshit over the years and has made Bukowski seem almost like an imaginary literary creature that floats on the sentence of every notebook, laptop, phone, book like some defining judge on how anything should be written, but that’s not the case.

Buk was a man who had a way with the written word and influenced so many and became a really famous writer but if he could see you all today, with your shiny coffee mug in the ‘hip’ coffee shop in town, surrounded by people just as weak as yourself and preening your confidence with your purrs of adoration of Buk and holding the only book of his you’ve read, he’d laugh at you. He’d hate you. He’d think you’re an idiot. He was his own man, something which is obvious in his writing and wasn’t afraid to let his soul fall loose on the page. Some of his poetry is real, emotional stuff. This is an excerpt from his poem, Raw With Love:

i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you

You can find the rest of the poem here. Read it if you haven’t. Just don’t copy it.

He didn’t write to be ‘cool’ or whatever, like a lot of ignorant people do nowadays. He wrote because he had to — it was in every sinew — and, as he said: ‘Find what you love, and let it kill you.’

So, go on, find it. You’re not the next Bukowski. Buk realised at a very early age that nobody is who they think they are.

I’m just trying to save face, I suppose. Get out of that coffee shop, buy some cheap teabags and a cheap jar of coffee, get a job — get two, even — and do something useful with your education, pick up new reading material (Craig Clevenger is pretty useful with words), think of your own story, turn on your laptop or steal some paper and write. You’ll probably feel a lot better about yourself, you pretentious fuck.