Buk exemplified the "just do it" trip as a writer by literally typing whatever came to mind---and loads of it, as he said, was pure drivel. But that's what he did. He sat down and typed and didn't censor his output. He didn't outline his work. He typed whatever came to mind, pulled out the sheet, set it aside, and put in a clean one. Then the next day he would review the previous night's work, throw out the the obvious crap, and "knock out the kinks" of those pages that impressed him, and then retype them and send them off (or stick 'em in his archive pile).
Alot of writers waste time...they talk about what they're gonna write, they spend loads of time on outlines & preliminaries & reworking old pieces, but Buk just stuck the sheets in regardless if he felt inspired, happy, sad, or hungover, he just sat down and typed.
In this regard he was much like a professional photographer: They shoot hundreds--even thousands--of photos but only end up using very few. Just keep clicking & clicking and, if you have a good eye for composition & form & lighting, then you're bound to produce a few winners. But you have to stick with it, have to keep clicking & clicking, and that's what Buk did.
He laughed at Hemingway for writing standing up, but christ, fucken Buk was relentless. You only have to read the "new poems" coming out in the last few years to see that. Alot of these "new poems" exemplify writing just for the sake of sitting in front of that typer and making it sing even if alot of the songs were dull & pedestrian. He loved being at that machine. And he had a decent enough return of damn good stuff, some of it immortal, to justify this sort of scattershot way of production and excuse the inevidable drivel that comes along with it.
Don't get me wrong, the current collections of "new poems" are worth reading, not because they are great (they aren't) but because they show that Buk wrote from many different psychological & sociological angles that aren't apparent in the older collections.
They show he was not the lazy, track playing, whore-chasing drunkard that so many fans would like to believe. He was a hard worker. He spent far more time at that typer than he did at any bar or bed or female body. That motherfucker spent countless hours writing, and stuffing envelopes---and, no doubt, reading magazines and finding places to send his stuff.
Bukowski succeeded because of talent, persistence & steady output. He did not try to write. He simply "did it"---even when he wasn't feeling immortal or inspired.
As for the "beats": They were an invention of Madison Avenue, and Ginsberg was their tireless promoter. The only one of them that had any true talent was Kerouac---the rest were bad jokes that got out of hand (especially Burroughs). They were just wave riders at the right place at the right time. Bukowski was not a beat writer. He was not part of that sham. Bukowski was simply Bukowski.