Introduction
It is always instructive to look at those who have succeeded before us and study how they became successful. However, there is never a formula or secret technique that will work for everyone. Just because it worked for a famous writer does not mean it will work for everyone. Nevertheless, there are still valuable lessons that we can learn we can take from a writer’s life. Sometimes the writers will explicitly give their advice, and other times we will need to study their life to see their routine, habits, and mindset. This piece is in a series where I talk about writers throughout history and examine what made them successful and what advice we can glean from them.
Charles Bukowski’s Life:
Born in 1920, in Andernach, Germany as Heinrich Karl Bukowski. His father was a German-American soldier that met an ethnic German woman who gave birth to Bukowski. His family moved to the U.S and moved around the country before eventually settling in Los Angeles, California. Heinrich Karl Bukowski’s anglicized to Henry Charles Bukowski, further shortened to Charles Bukowski.
Bukowski is known as a down-and-out hard-drinking crusty old misanthrope, with the soft heart of a poet buried deep inside. Despite his popularity, he is still regarded, even by his fans, as an underground niche. If you are not familiar with him as a writer, you may be shocked by his coarse and potentially offensive prose. His poetry is no different from his prose, it’s written in an untamed and wild free verse. His characteristic style is undisciplined (though his fans would not consider that to be a disparagement). Reading Bukowski is like being dragged across a city sidewalk as broken malt liquor bottles, hamburger wrappers, and urine coat it’s surface. When reading him, you hear from a man buried under Los Angeles, along with the rest of those underground. He is a man from the underground who comes to the surface to speak for the underground. That is who his fans are (or at least identify themselves with) and why they love him. People identify with his style. He was no overnight success, though. He showed signs of minimal career success in his 20’s but soon gave writing up entirely and drifted around the country, taking up odd jobs. It wasn’t until he had a potentially fatal bleeding ulcer (no doubt a result of his heavy drinking) at the age of 35, after which miraculous recovery, he fanatically pursued his writing aspirations.
Here are 3 things that you can learn from this writer’s life.
Be a Relentless Writing Machine
As I mentioned above, Bukowski suffered from a bleeding ulcer that nearly killed him in his mid-30s. His Doctor told him that he would die if he drank anymore; despite almost dying, he did not heed the Doctor’s warning and continued drinking long into his life. The near-death experience, however, did have some transformative effect on him. It revitalized his passion for writing. Bukowski was not known to be a disciplined man, nor did he attempt to portray himself as one. However, his uncharacteristic tenacity to write resulted in tremendous results. By the end of his life, he had published over 40 books of poetry, short stories, and novels. He achieved that level of output by relentlessly writing every week.
In this video, Bukowski is asked how often he writes. He answers that he only writes 3–4 out of seven days a week (which is not impressive by professional writer standards). However, what he goes on to say is that if he doesn’t do it, it affects his mental health. He even adds that if, for some reason, he couldn’t write, he would pay for the privilege to write. Bukowski was driven by an intense and burning need to write, a need that you can feel down to your bones, the need that will push you to finish your writing projects just as it propelled Bukowski to finish his.
Be different
Bukowski was known for his larger-than-life personality, and people love him as a character as much as his writing. They like what he represents. Bukowski was a drifter who couldn’t keep a job. When he did have a job, he complained about how hard it was. Having said that, he was also uncompromising in his style. He was a writer who wrote only for themselves and wasn’t preoccupied with filling the mold of some agency or publisher. The lesson we can take from Bukowski’s example is that we shouldn’t be afraid to be who we are. We should stop and reconsider if it is worth diminishing ourselves so that our writing can fulfill another person’s expectations.
Another group of writers who can note the individualistic example that Bukowski has set for all of us are aspiring writers. Many writers were (or are) in similar situations as Bukowski, stuck in dead-end jobs, or don’t know what direction their life is going (or do know and don’t like it). To those people, Bukowski shows them that they are not crazy. You can be a writer. Don’t be afraid to express yourself. Bukowski was surrounded by working-class people (and below). He didn’t have a college degree, nor did he know any published writers. You shouldn’t let your environment shape your perception of what you can accomplish. Bukowski displays this by being nothing but precisely who he was and let us all deal with him as we please.
Get personal
Most of what Bukowski wrote was semi-autobiographical. Bukowski would often tell events parallel to his own life through the character “Henry Chinaski.” In the novel “Ham on Rye,” Bukowski gets to talk about himself and his childhood. He talked about his abusive father, how he was bullied, and how girls wouldn’t go out with him because of his bad acne. Bukowski reveals himself, not in a favorable light, but an undeniably honest one.
He presents us writers with a challenge. We should lay ourselves bare before our readers, allowing ourselves to be seen in the most honest light possible. When we are honest about who we are, our stories’ emotions will take on the visceral, raw character that Bukowski is often credited for having in his own writing. Don’t be afraid to put yourself in your story. You could place your experiences, your passions, even your opinions. When the writer reveals themself, it seems more honest to the reader.
Takeaway:
I will close out by linking to another interview clip with Bukowski. A writer who was obsessed with freedom. He was a hero of rebellious teenagers and old people working in anticipation of their pension. He represents people who are rarely represented in literature, the rough and rowdy lower classes who populate bars on streets that decent people would never dare walk. For that, he is appreciated by the numerous fans that still buy his books, even if he’ll never reside in the venerable canon of the “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.”
