listen:

your favorite writers

are always going to tell you 
to write
to keep writing 

your favorite writers

are going to tell you to write all the time

because they claim they did and you

(following along in their wake

like sweet little sleep deprived interns

in the Hospital Of Broken Hearts)

ought to damn well do the same

 

your favorite writers

are going to tell you to write

every day

tell you to churn thirty poems in thirty days

or a novel in a month

because that’s how it works

when the Fire is on them

 

that’s how they get to be favorite writers

the poor slobs

that’s how they get to be famous

a month of crazy at a time

maybe for a few months at a time

and voila the New Hotness doth arrive

 

listen:

your favorite writers will tell you

all sorts of things

to disguise the fact that they don’t have a clue

as to how this works 

not really

 

they agitate for cause and effect

because not to is to suggest

a case for werewolves vampire

sghosts and zombies

not as literary devices and archetypes

but as the horrid afterbirth 
of their own failed work

 

listen:

if your gut tells you the best thing for your writing

is to take a month offsquare your taxes

screw your neighbor hugely for hours at a time

walk your mother in the park

 

watch a lot of television

and drink

 

you owe it to yourself to try that

because when I look at my favorite writers

I see more of that 
than the cold and sober work they prescribe

for all the whippersnappers and upstarts

 

formulas are for chemists and physicists

writers suck at them mostly

write when you want

how you want

where you want

 

interns

get some sleep

this ain’t life and death

no matter how it feels

in the moment

no matter how it feels

in the long haul