My thoughts on Tiny Beautiful Things
MR sent me this book, and it came at the perfect time: in the dead of a leaf-less, below-zero, sharp, cold winter. It's a compilation of essays from an advice column (Dear Sugar), and the stories warm me up on days that are cold. They're not your average "Dear Abby" kind of letters; Sugar tells it like it is, and her responses to readers are often entangled with her own effed up life experiences. The pages are so saturated in empathy, you could almost wring them out. It's wonderful, and even better than that, it's really real.
One of my favorite chapters, entitled: "Write Like a Motherfucker" starts out with a letter that says, "Right now, I'm a pathetic and confused young woman of twenty-six, a writer who can't write. I've sat here, at my desk, for hours, mentally immobile[...]" She then goes on to give several more eerily relatable details about her mutual love for and fear of writing and then asks, "How does a woman get up and become the writer she wishes she'd be?" Uhh.. hello?! Is this my own journal that was somehow submitted without my knowledge and then published in this book??
And then Sugar, of course, writes an inspiring, tough love response with conviction and authority, and it's pretty great. Here are my two favorite parts:
1. "Writing is hard for every last one of us--straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."
2. “Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.”
Read it:
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
One of my favorite chapters, entitled: "Write Like a Motherfucker" starts out with a letter that says, "Right now, I'm a pathetic and confused young woman of twenty-six, a writer who can't write. I've sat here, at my desk, for hours, mentally immobile[...]" She then goes on to give several more eerily relatable details about her mutual love for and fear of writing and then asks, "How does a woman get up and become the writer she wishes she'd be?" Uhh.. hello?! Is this my own journal that was somehow submitted without my knowledge and then published in this book??
And then Sugar, of course, writes an inspiring, tough love response with conviction and authority, and it's pretty great. Here are my two favorite parts:
1. "Writing is hard for every last one of us--straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."
2. “Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.”
Read it:
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
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