Advice For Young Writers

your favorite writers

will always tell you
if you’re going to be a writer
you must write

will always 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 the poor slobs
got to be your favorite writers

that’s how they got to be famous
one month of crazy at a time
at most for a few months at a time
and voila
the New Hotness
doth arrive

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

they assume
cause and effect
because to assume otherwise
is to make a case
for genius werewolves
vampire ghosts
and sentient zombies

listen:
if your gut tells you
the best thing for your writing
is to take a month off
or square your taxes
to screw your neighbor hugely for hours at a time
or walk your mother in the park
to watch a lot of television
and drink

you owe it to yourself
to try that

when I look at my favorite writers

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

formulas are for chemists and physicists
writers suck at them mostly
write when you want
how you want
where you want

my beloved 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