The certainties are beyond certain – and then all of a sudden you know nothing – except the sound a gasp makes.
It was the most convincing of deceptions – trickery through the sublime crafting of words – you think you know, but you don’t really. The story unfolds, the dark humour lifting the weight from the gravity of the tale; characters on whom you immediately draw the wrong conclusions; a snaking plot twisting down the hillside to the valley below; back and forth the narrative goes, the more you read, the more you know; the certainties are beyond certain – and then all of a sudden you know nothing – except the sound a gasp makes.
The author using their guile and skill to lead us on a merry dance, text stitched together to create the most intricate of designs – we’ve seen this picture before, or so we thought. Like peering through the windows of another life, we can’t drag your eyes away from what we see unfolding before us – our imaginations glued to the plot as we greedily consume the words, the taste is familiar, but there’s something in the recipe which is new – just can’t put a finger on it.
But then the only thing we know is the sound a gasp makes.
Extracts from ‘so you want to be a writer?’ by Charles Bukowski
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 wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
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.
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