Don’t Try
Charles Bukowski wasn’t your typical success story. Born in Germany in 1920 and raised in Los Angeles, he grew up in a rough, working-class neighbourhood and faced hardship and abuse from a young age.
Life was a constant battle for him, from the Great Depression through years of dead-end jobs, alcoholism, and rejection from literary circles. Bukowski was always an outsider, known for his unfiltered and often abrasive personality. Yet, despite it all, he wrote prolifically, filling notebook after notebook with poetry and stories that spoke to everyday life’s raw, gritty reality.
Bukowski’s work was often rejected for being too blunt or too raw. It wasn’t until he was nearly fifty that he got his break—a small publisher gave him the chance to write a novel. The result was Post Office, a brutally honest book that reflected his own experiences and frustrations working for the postal service. This was his turning point, and his career took off, building a dedicated following of readers who appreciated his no-nonsense approach to life and art.
But perhaps the most enduring piece of Bukowski’s philosophy lies in the two words engraved on his tombstone: “Don’t try.” At first, it sounds almost contradictory—why would a man who wrote so obsessively for so long leave behind an epitaph like that? Bukowski explained it like this: “Don’t try” wasn’t about giving up; it was about finding your path, letting creativity flow naturally without forcing it or chasing fame.
For him, creativity couldn’t be manufactured. He believed in being true to oneself, unfiltered and unrefined. “Don’t try” meant don’t pretend, don’t fake it, and don’t force it. Let life guide you, and if you’re going to pursue something, pursue it with every part of yourself.
Here’s the advice Bukowski left us: If you feel called to create, do it not because you want fame or money but because it’s something you can’t live without. Creativity, he believed, should be an overflow of what’s inside you, not a forced attempt to meet someone else’s standards. If it feels like a burden, maybe it’s not really for you. And if you are going to try, as Bukowski said, go all in.
I’ll leave you with his poem, So You Want to Be a Writer:
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.there is no other way.
and there never was.
And if you’re going to try, as he put it, “go all the way.”