Once, I needed $300 for a new outfit. So, in an hour or so, I wrote a pretentious and insipid article about my sadness for Buzzfeed. It was translated into three languages and was viewed millions of times. I started getting a bunch of fan mail from Brazil.
Once, on a sunny autumn afternoon, I pounded out 4,000 words about my experiences with phenibut at a cafe by the river in Prague. My wife was proud of me, and I had a steak that night to celebrate. Over the next few months, I expanded it, and sent it to my publisher as part of a book proposal. The publisher said, during an enthusiastic meeting, “I kept having to stop reading and say, man, Sasha is so fucking good,” and then rejected the proposal a few months later after sporadic email contact.
Once, I reflected on a few years of my experience and tried to sum them up in an ambitious, experimental lyric essay, the culmination of years of my influences and sentiments packed into something that, to me, felt perfect and indelible. Maybe 50 people have read it, and few of them liked it.
Once, I set out to write an essay about the mental lives of top chess players. At the time, I didn’t find the subject super interesting, so, after writing a couple of drafts, I slacked on the assignment, then wrote something weird about my own relationship with chess at the last minute. Everyone loved it and it became my book deal.
Once, the New York Times asked me to write something about bubbles. I worked super hard and hated the end product, but a producer at a top-flight Hollywood talent agency read it, loved it, and called me in for a meeting. We vaped and had beers at a hotel bar, and, during a meeting at his century city office, he told me I could be a famous screenwriter. But the meetings went nowhere.
Once, I spent two years writing a surrealist novel about the life of Barack Obama. I sent scraps of it to some people and they were impressed. The novel turned into a nervous breakdown and it no longer resists. When I recall my long nights working on it, I have memories of smoking and GERD.
Once, I was thinking of writing a book about psychedelics. One of the interview subjects promised me a job at their company, and I quit the job I had at the time and flew overseas to hang out with this merry band of friendly people. At their conference, I met my wife. But the job never happened, and neither did the book.
Once, I wrote something and I liked it, and it just fluidly fell out of me, as if God was using me as a paintbrush. I did everything I set out to do. It glows in my mind, still. In directionless, sullen hours, it serves as a lantern guiding me towards the far shore.
So is this ur way of saying
Don’t try?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/lateralaction.com/articles/bukowski/%3famp
Once, this once, I am inspired.