When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that you're pushing it. The horses [horse races] give me something to do. At the age of 50 I quit a job at the post office and decided to become a full-time writer. The old guy's crazy, my landlady declared, striking her head with her palm. I wrote my first novel, named "Post Office", in nineteen nights, working on Scotch and beer. I had prepared by going to L.A. City College and taking journalism. They taught me how to type.(...)I just got an electric a couple of years ago. At the first, I was a starving writer. I went from 190 pounds down to 130. Everything I put in the mail came right back to me. The Atlantic, Harper's, The New Yorker, they rejected everything. I threw it all away. I started out again, selling to the porno mags. What I used to do was, write a good story and throw in some goddamn sex. It worked. I only got one story rejected - it had too much sex! They draw a fine line. 'Bukowski,' the editor wrote me, 'nobody on earth screws that many women in a week and a half!'[1987]
