Out of all the words a writer could have imprinted on their headstone, Charles Bukowski chose “Don’t try”.
The younger me thought that was terrible advice, how could he say that? Thousands of poems, years at the typewriter.
I was reading it too fast, too young.
Four years before he died, in a letter to William Packard, he wrote:
“We work too hard. We try too hard. Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there.”
The older me thinks this is what he meant: if it isn’t already there, wait. If the waiting never ends, go do something else.
Trying is writing with one eye on the reader. Building sentences to get admiration. Using words that wear tuxedos. A reader can always tell, because it looks like writing. Trying to write is wanting applause before the work is done, and wanting usually ends up spilling over the page.
Not trying means staying on the thing. The word that does not come. The way a person would say it. You wait, you are not lazy for waiting. A true sentence comes on its own schedule. The shiny one was available the whole time, and the availability is the trap, it always has been. A clever line is always within reach, waiting means refusing it.
I learned to write reading him. He wrote flat and plain, and he wrote with no apology. He wrote the way people talk when they are tired of impressing anyone, which is the only way true things get said.
Don’t try.