The thing about going beyond is we have to keep going… Every last one of us can do better than give up. The thing about rising is we have to continue upward. Everyone runs into trouble and problems and temptations. Of course everyone feels like quitting sometimes. Neither is a place where we get any work done. You loathe yourself and yet you’re consumed by the grandiose ideas you have about your own importance. It laments that you’ll never be as good as David Foster Wallace-a genius, a master of the craft-while at the same time describing how little you write. It presumes you should be a success at 26, when it really it takes most writers so much longer. Sugar immediately zeroes in on the real problem: arrogance.īeneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing: there’s arrogance at its core. She cannot seem to write the big, transformative, feminist book she believes she is destined to write, and the people in her life have not been supportive and do not understand her drive. In one letter, Strayed hears from a 26-year-old who is depressed that she has not yet found success as a writer. I hope it resonates as much with you as it did with me. And occasionally, when we are lucky, those essays address what it means to be a writer and the struggle with having something to say. Most of the time her answers stop being answers and become deeply moving essays that stand on their own. Most of the letter writers are just normal people struggling with life. Most of them have nothing to do with writing. Those columns, which have long been cult favorites on the internet, have recently been adapted into an amazing book. I’m talking about Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, who since 2010 also happens to have sidelined as Dear Sugar on The Rumpus.
What happens when a mega-bestselling author spends two years writing an anonymous advice column about love, life, loss, pain, and work? Some of the best insights on the craft of writing and the writer’s journey that you’ll ever read, that’s what.
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