Contest

Part V of the Bukowski excerpts:

So, I haven't written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting ready. I am not in a contest. I never wanted fame or money. I wanted to get the word down the way I wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worse than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things.

Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply read another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.


More soon.

JS