The buzz about Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir, Wild, couldn’t be ignored. If Oprah Winfrey brought back her Book Club just because of this manuscript, I knew I had to read it. Most everything Oprah recommended I’d read before she announced the selection. But Wild was a wild card thrown in my direction. The jacket described this book about the rough experiences on the Pacific Crest Trail backpacking by a single woman. Soul-searching adventure, hunh? Losing your mother, messing up your marriage with infidelities, getting hooked on heroin and having nothing left to lose, Cheryl Strayed strapped on a backpack and left Minnesota for good. When Cheryl divorced, she changed her last name to Strayed. It fit. She had strayed from her marriage. She had strayed from the expectations others had for her and she strayed away from her family once her mother died. Half-way through her escapades, she receives a package in the mail with a handmade necklace from a friend. Six beads have letters on them spelling out Strayed. Except the Y is in a different font and resembles a V more than a Y. When she wears her necklace, others mistake it for “starved,” and in her real moments of starvation this works like a charm on passersby. I liked this book as a reader but it did not immediately grab me. I didn’t even like her initially as a narrator. She’d left her husband for no good reason after she couldn’t control her inexplicable marital infidelities. The…
“There’s a long history, of women especially, saying ‘Well, I just got lucky.’ I didn’t just get lucky. I worked my f***ing a** off. And then I got lucky. And if I hadn’t worked my a** off, I wouldn’t have gotten lucky. You have to do the work. You always have to do the work.” –Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things Simply… [Read More]
Filed Under: Cheryl Strayed, dedication, disciipline, luck, shortcuts, work
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“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that,” Stephen King wrote in his memoir, On Writing. When I hear from aspiring authors they don’t have time to read, I think about Stephen King’s observation. The likelihood of publication plummets when a writer doesn’t read. It IS that simple. As a developmental editor… [Read More]
If there were some easy ways to be more productive as a writer, would you want to know about them? If so, read on. “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” —W. Somerset Maugham In the above quote, Maugham is getting at one of the critical distinctions between professional working writers and, well, everyone else (which here… [Read More]
Little Free Library Big Book Access Kickstarter Campaign met its fundraising goal last week to help get books into the hands of those who need them most. Created by Todd Bol, the campaign celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the non-profit which he started as a tribute to his mother who loved books and loved to share her passion for reading. A couple years ago… [Read More]
Getting Found Online as an Author You can’t afford to ignore the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) if you are a professional writer. The title of your book can affect whether readers find it using search engines. Putting Your Passion into Print was the name for the first edition of the excellent guidebook written by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. It is now… [Read More]