Cheryl Strayed’s best seller “Wild” chronicles her journey as a young woman on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and how the trip helped her find herself during a time of great difficulty in her life. But that’s not all she has to offer. “Tiny Beautiful Things” is a collection of anonymous advice columns that Strayed wrote for the website TheRumpus.net under the penname “Dear Sugar.” Additionally, her novel “Torch” tells the story of a family coping with grief after loss.
In an interview with The Daily Cardinal, Strayed, now 45, said her upcoming talk would mostly involve telling stories from her life as a writer and what she has learned.
“I’m mostly going to talk about ‘Wild,’ but in so many ways that ends up being a talk about really my whole journey as a writer, starting with my first book ‘Torch,’ and of course my experience with ‘Dear Sugar’—but first of all, I’ll speak to this idea of journey and how much that journey on the PCT taught me and has meant to me as both a person and a writer.”
However, she went on to say the talk would be more than just a retelling of what was in her memoir.
“I’ll tell… deeper versions of some of the stories that are in ‘Wild,’ and maybe some of the stories that didn’t make the cut in the book. I always love when I hear other writers talking about the story behind the story if you will, so I’ll talk about that, and really also ... how I even came to the place where I decided to write about the hike.”
Strayed also spoke about how people often ask her why she waited so long to write about the hike, but she says she “only thought of [her]self as writing when [she] had something to say.”
When asked what advice she would give to aspiring writers, she emphasized the importance of personal care in the writing process, particularly when it comes to confronting your own doubts and the doubts of others.
“I would say you really have to take care of the emotional component of it. It’s a really difficult thing to say to yourself and give yourself permission to be a writer and to ignore the voices around you who will express doubt and who will tell you to do something a little more practical and say that it’s very unlikely your book will ever be published.”
She was nevertheless realistic about what outcomes aspiring writers can expect.
“Most people who write books are not published, and most people who publish books don’t really have much to show for it in terms of financial gain or fame or all of those things we really associate with success… One thing I learned early on was that I had to measure success differently than society measures success.”
She further argued that writing for writing’s sake rather than for particular results, as well as taking care of your mental health, would in fact help you to write your best and receive the initial desired rewards such as publication.
“And when you really do believe in that, you start to put yourself where you should be, which is in your work, instead of obsessed with things like what everybody thinks or where it’s going to get published. What ends up happening is that those positive outcomes become more likely… I always encourage aspiring writers to respect themselves and to try to write the things that they really have to tell, that thing which is burning in them.”
Strayed will visit campus Wednesday, March 5, to give a talk sponsored by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Distinguished Lecture Series at 7:30 p.m. in Union South’s Varsity Hall.
