An argument against piddling.

Excerpted from a letter written by Charles Bukowski, the American poet and novelist, to the editor William Packard, dated 8 November 1991, 11:29PM.

"I believe what we have to fear is the feeling of the general public toward poetry and/or art. They have no idea what it is but they have the thought that anybody can do it if they feel like doing it. They feel that way too--they can do it, after Jill and Bobby finish college and the mortgage is paid. In fact, many of them already label themselves as Artists. "Oh, Bobby paints...Jill writes..." And they even might have little stacks of listless and off-hand work about. They may even have attended classes. They are the piddlers in the field and most of the field are piddlers. These won't lay down any blood to get their work done, they won't gamble with madness, starvation in their need to get the work done. They don't feel it that way. They want fame and name but they won't give up their comforts and their securities. They claim to be Artists and somehow feel that it will all come together for them. Meanwhile, they might live on hand-outs from relatives instead of having the guts to score for an ugly 8 hour job and to try to break the walls from there. The public has this big soft toad concept of Art, they see it as being done by nice scrubbed intelligent pretty folk with French, German or especially English accents. They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from being too alive in the middle of death. It comes from...new and awful places and the same old places...It comes..."