Day 7 of Grateful Hearts

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Thinking about what I am writing (photo by my wife).

I am grateful to the words of other writers.

I take them in deeply and think about them and how they relate to my present circumstances, except for maybe my first week on Medium. I feel like I fell into a parallel universe. It was like landing landing in Oz and I felt overwhelmed.

That’s another story. And I’m finally adapting.

I am reading Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things. It’s a book on advice on love and life from a Dear Sugar column she wrote for Salon.

I don’t need much love advice, but I found her encouragement to a 26-year--old writer who was struggling with her writing and depression to be what I needed to hear in my season as a writer.

“As my thirtieth birthday approached, I realized that if I truly wanted to write the story I had to tell, I would have to gather everything within me to make it happen. I would have to sit and think of only one thing longer and harder than I thought possible. I would have to suffer.

I needed to hear these words. To be challenged to finish what I start. To gather up everything in me and bring that inner fortitude to my writing.

I needed to hear what it took her to finish her book Wild. To sit and think about one thing longer and harder…