YouSaid · the spoken record

Cheryl Strayed

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2017-03-31
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2017-03-31
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  1. “I broke my own rule in this one question. I responded to her personally. Usually I only respond on the show or in the column. And I emailed her personally because I felt like she was in a really desperate situation and needed help. But I also wrote to her to say, like, I could not possibly be the person. Nobody would be the person who could tell you what to do because there are some decisions that have such high stakes and such personal consequences that only you can say. So those are really hard ones when it's a You know those are that's a very black and white decision, right? Whatever that person decides that's really a big deal Usually the kinds of questions we get”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Yeah. You know, many times, so I used to write a column, the Deer Circle column, but now I have this podcast. And there are definitely questions that are like, wow, I don't know. What to say? I don't know what to tell you to do. And one of the things I've always positioned myself as when it comes to giving advice is sugar is it's not really, I'm not trying to tell people what to do. I'm trying to help them ask deeper questions. I'm trying to help them help illuminate maybe sometimes people think that their question is this, but it's really that. And I think of myself as somebody who's trying to illuminate a conflict or a struggle by way of giving advice. And there are sometimes where it's just impossible. I would say the few times both in the column and then now on the radio show that I've received a question from a woman who is pregnant and doesn't know what to do. Like have an abortion, have the baby and give it up for adoption or keep the baby. I'm thinking of one woman right now wrote to me with that scenario. And I...”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “I would have like months of just dreams about accepting my mother's death. And the dream that I had over and over, which I know is the boringest thing in the whole world, to have somebody tell you their dream, but I'll just keep it quick, is that I would have to murder my mother over and over I had to kill her, had to beat her to death, had to bury her alive, had to run her over with a truck, had to do terrible things to my mother. And it was just like because I couldn't believe she was dead. And I think that what I've come to know through my work is that, you know, I've talked to so many people who have Dying.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Now, I get that. Yeah, to me, it's more organic. It really is just an awareness because it sounds I want to return to this thing I said where it never it had never occurred to me that my mom would die and of course I'm being hyperbolic it had occurred to me but it occurred to me in that same way like that most of us go along in our lives feeling rather complacent right that like you know it could happen but it probably won't so let's like just push that really far and so at this moment you know when my mom died I was like I said a senior in college I was also in this moment of my life and all of our lives when we're in our early 20s where you're you're trying to figure out like who you are you know coming into your manhood or your womanhood and that's that's you know what was happening to me and you know it took me one of the most fascinating processes I ever went through was actually letting go of my mother and you know my even”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Know what the word would be a more realistic sense of who we are and what we're doing here, you know, and a greater sense of I want to use the word consequence when I say bye to people, I think, I try to make that connection. Do you think that's crazy”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Every day since my mom died, there hasn't been a day that I haven't thought about my own death. That's true. And I don't think about it in a morbid way, but I think of it in a way that I'm aware of not taking my life for granted and not taking your life for granted or any of our lives for granted. I think we have this really a problem with death and this culture. We keep it at a distance. And I think even at the expense of our imagining our own mortality, like we think of this as sort of a grim thing to think about. And I actually just think it's a very realistic way to carry out throughout your day, to think, you know, okay, here I am, and I'm lucky to be here. And let's just hope this goes till tomorrow. I think that it has given me.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “I was a senior in college. My mom was a senior in college too. And what happened to me really from that moment on is I was like not only devastated that I'd lost my mom, but I was shocked. I was young enough that it never occurred to me, like really, I never had to confront it. It had never occurred to me that my mom would die at a time when I used to think she wasn't meant to die that young I still had this kind of youthful idea that people lived to be old. And of course that's what happened. And so when my mom died, I suddenly was just acutely aware that any of us could die at any moment. And I know that it sounds strange to be 22 and rationally I knew we could all die. But I didn't know it in my bones. You know, I didn't know it in my body. And my mom dined, gave that to me. And so it's true. I think what I said in that post is that”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “That's interesting. I did make a Facebook post one time that said that. I don't remember what compelled that post, but I know what compelled it in my life. So when I was 22, my mom died very suddenly of cancer at the age of 45. She knew that she had cancer for seven weeks. She was like this healthy person and then she got what she thought was a bad cold. And one thing led to another and she was told that she had advanced stage lung cancer. She hadn't been a smoker. And she just died. I mean, she just died seven weeks later.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I just say, write the part that you know. Okay. So that might mean it's kind of sloppy, like that I have to start writing something that's like, you know, a third of the way into the piece. Like it's a scene that I've already imagined that's going to be in there or a paragraph, just a description of something. And what I find is once I start writing, I relax. And then, of course, you can go back and make that beginning. So just begin in a nonlinear, like trust that you don't have to write something in a linear fashion. And sometimes that also reveals to you like a better way that the story can be told. Because chronology is always a question in any piece you write. Do you begin here or do you begin there? And sometimes the writing process actually can teach you the answer to that question.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Well, you know, one of the things I'm 48 now, I've been a series writer since I was like 19. And I really have learned how to remember the lessons I've learned along the way. And one of the lessons I learned is it's always hard for me to begin. And not just, I don't mean just like what the first line is of any given chapter or piece, which is always hard. But even like when you've been in that flow and then you take that break, you've finished that section and then you have to begin the next. And I think that I get, it's almost like this, almost like performance anxiety. Like I'm always like, you know, what's the first thing I'm going to say when I step into the room? That's difficult for many of us, right? It's like that beginning. You know, you know what you have to say, but how do you get to the part where you get to just say what you have to say? And so in writing, what I do is I take a shortcut around it. And when I'm”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Exactly. So that's a good one. The woe is me one. Never fails because, like I said, you know, we can all complain. And sometimes that complaint is serious and deep and valid and sometimes it's just like these little dumb things that we're pissed off about. And the rants, rants and raves, we're all really good at that kind of passion. I think something like Your Darkest Teacher, that one, is a really important one to me because part of my, I would say one of the most significant stops along the way for me as a writer was feeling grateful for the people who taught me things that were difficult or painful or ugly, things that I didn't want to know. And actually getting to a place with them that I did feel grateful for what they had given me.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Oh, yeah. Was a talisman one. When I ask people to To write about an object. So, a talisman is simply an object that has accumulated meaning for you or your character, right? And so this could be, I mean, it could be anything. It could be a cultural talisman is like my wedding ring. We all know what this means, right? And then there are other things like you don't know the meaning of this ring. That's a personal talisman. And all of those things have a story attached to them. And I find too that when people write about themselves via a physical object, it's incredibly expensive. People are willing to say more about themselves often when the story is about something other than them.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Me narrative. And everyone can do it instantly because everyone feels sorry for themselves. Everyone has a complaint, whether it be large or small. And we have lots of stories to tell about ourselves, the ways that we've been wronged by the driver in the next lane or the mother who didn't do this or that, you know. And I think that kind of, there's something good about our stories rising from those wounded moments.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “The people or person who made you suffer, and you start to have to empathize with them. You have to start to ask, like, well, why did this person do this to me? Or what did it mean when that happened? And I think that it really is, you know, this word healing is kind of overused. And yet it's exactly what that is. I think this is why therapists are always, you know, they don't put you in the chair and say, let's not talk about anything bad that happened to you in your childhood. They say, what happened? Where are your wounds? And writing is all about that. Writing is all about where your wounds. And you see this, I see this over and over again in teaching. You know, this is what people, these are the stories that people want to tell. I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard that the oldest continuously used sentence in the English language is woe is me. And one of my favorite writing prompts is I ask my students, write a woe is”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Literature, creating art. And so, you know, I think it's good that I had to understand more deeply what happened to me. I mean, one of the things once you start to tell a story about your suffering is you have to think about”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Emotional things. It's put in this kind of like, oh, that's your nice little journal. You're processing your emotions versus it being allowed to be in like the sort of high art camp of great American literature. And so I would say absolutely not. It is not casartic. This is literature. And by the time I published Wild, I felt confident enough in my work and also evolved enough in my own life that I could say, you know, both things are true. There is no question that The most cathartic, I would say the most cathartic thing in my life right alongside motherhood for me has been writing. It is through writing that I have come to understand who I am and what I've been through and therefore who we all are. And that's really been an emotional journey and one that I'm better for having taken. And so yet that can also be by way of creating.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Cry riding wild. Yeah, I would say probably every day. You know, probably every day. And with that good for me or bad for me, it was really good for me. When I first, my first book torch is fiction, but there are autobiographical elements to it. It's a story about a woman who dies young of cancer like my mom did. And it's kind of a first novel in that way that a lot of first novels are both fiction and autobiographical. And I remember when that book first came out, and I was always talking about the real life experiences that were connected to that book, people would say, was it cathartic for you to write it? And I was, I would always say no, you know, because I was in some ways defensive about that. Maybe specifically as a woman writer, because I think whenever women in particular write about”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Right, yeah. Now, that's a question that comes up a lot. And I think that there are basically two kinds of people, those who think talking about thinking about difficult experiences or painful memories or painful emotions is a bad thing because it brings up those feelings again. Why would you want to dwell on something that makes you cry or makes you remember that sorrow? There's that camp. And then there's the camp that is like, let's dig it all up because the only way ever to understand what happened or make some meaning of that suffering is to examine it and to look at it.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “It doesn't matter what you should do, just make an intention and follow through with it. And so if that, if all you can do is say, I'm going to write one day a month. I'm going to take one day a month, that's all I'm doing is writing. That's 12 good days a year. That's a lot of writing you can get done. And she said to me, that's what I do. I write once a month. My mom takes my kids. And she had never allowed herself to think of herself as a writer because she'd been doing it wrong. She hadn't been doing what that old guy who gets his lunch brought to him by his wife had said you had to do. I think it's really liberating to say you have to do, like with anything, writing with life. You have to do it in a way that works for you.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Yeah. Well, that's right. Part of the writing is just wandering the room and yeah, that sort of thing. You know, I do think that The reason that this is important, I think, to say and talk about is for some reason, like shame and guilt is a really big thing for a lot of writers. You know, this thing that we should be doing. And I can't tell you how many times I've told this story of being a binge writer and somebody comes up to me afterwards and says, thank you, thank you. You gave me permission to call myself a writer. And the most moving experience I had in that regard was I was giving a talk in Ohio a few years ago. And afterwards, this woman came up to me and she has, she was a single mother with four kids and had been, you know, slowly writing her novel over many years. And she worked at like a 7-Eleven or some job like that. And she was crying about this thing I had said about mind writing. And she said, because one thing I said, it's like it.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Time. And so I just knew that I had to just go all the way there during those hotel stays. And what about you? I mean, is that your experience? Is it kind of like you're a mad ban?”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “I think there's something about it too that when you have like 48 hours or whatever number, like I knew that my time was limited and therefore it was really valuable. And I got into the flow. You know, I think it's, I mean, there are different terms for this, the immersive flow, that kind of thing that happens. And, you know, I think that you need to have that thing happen for any kind of real work, but especially creative work. When you're writing, what you're trying to create on the page is that John Gardner describes it as this vivid and continuous dream. You actually are trying to create an alternate reality for somebody else. You have to tell them what that person looks like, what that person feels like, what that person is thinking, what's in the room, what does it smell like? All of those things have to come alive. And that can't come alive on the page if you aren't inhabiting that. And it's really hard to dip into that for 15 minutes at a time.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “If somebody had a video camera and recorded me during those times, it would look like sheer madness because I hardly sleep. I hardly eat. All I do is go on walks and write and go on walks and write and go on walks and write. There is this”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “And silence. And those are the three things that children are most not about. And I had to find, you know, a place to do that. And so once my kids were a little bit older, I had them 18 months. Two nights. I'm going to be gone for 48 hours. Don't call me unless somebody stops breathing. And I'm going to work. And I would get more work done in those 48 hours than I got done for weeks at home. And this isn't to say I didn't write around the edges of things at home, but I find that when I do that immersion, it's incredibly fruitful for me. And, you know, like I said, that was true even before kids. I never thought of it until I had kids and actually had to get away to a hotel or whatever. But before that, I would go to writers' residencies or I would just go rent a cabin somewhere. And there's something about that sort of uninterrupted time to make something happen that works far better for me than that every day like you have to write two or three hours every day. And that's just how it is. That's just my process.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Can say this is the block of time that I'm not going to be able to write. And sometimes that's like a couple days. Sometimes that's a couple months. And therefore I release myself from any kind of guilt or shame or I should be writing when I'm not writing. And the counterpoint to that is to say, now I am going to write on these days or during these months. And I try to arrange my life so that that happens. And so, you know, what that looks like for me is not so much a daily practice as it is looking, you know, looking at the month and saying, when can I write and when am I not going to write? And so for me, especially since I had kids, when the children came, my kids are 11 and 12. When I had kids, suddenly my whole life had to be redefined, obviously, but especially that work life, because writing is all about concentration, solitude.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “So for a long time, I denied the fact that I was a binge writer. And I'm here to tell you what my name is Cheryl Straiden. I'm a binge writer. You know, when I remember being in my 20s and I would go to like, you know, see writers, give lectures and readings and so forth. It would always be some like, you know, old guy who was like, Of course I write every day. If you don't write every day, you're not a writer. And then you would look deeper and this man would be like in his office and then his wife would bring him lunch and then he would have lunch and then he would write a letter. And I was like, that's just not my life. Nobody's like catering my life. I was bringing lunch to other people. I was a waitress. So what I found is that I creatively, and this was true before I had kids, it's true after as well for different reasons, is that I do best when I”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “We think of them all in these, we disassociate them from things like strength and power. But I really think that the only way to get to those places is through those things.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “You know, in the midst of my humility, my humility is about really forgetting about all of those glorious things that one gets when one has what we call success. Attention, fame, money, whatever, achievement, but just put my faith in the work and be really fierce when it comes and very exacting and demand a lot of myself when it comes to actually doing the work. And so that combination of that kind of real strength that you have to have to do something that's hard. Writing a book is hard, writing an essay is hard, writing a poem is hard with that kind of sense of surrender, that sense of kind of like, here I am, I'm going to do this work and I don't know where it will lead and acceptance. I think that humility, acceptance, and surrender as all these really, you know, words that are connected to each other in meaning.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “Okay, it's about having motherfuckatude. Which is a combination of two seemingly opposing ideas, and that is humility, which I think sometimes gets misinterpreted as weakness, as being subservient. And there's a reason we think that, right? To be humble, we say people, when somebody came of humble means, we mean they came from nothing. The word humble actually comes from the Latin humus, which means the ground, to be download, to be of the earth. And what I found in my journey as a writer is that, you know, even though I aspired to greatness, even though I wanted to make beauty and truth and all those big high fluten things, the only way that I could do it was to be humble and to say, I'm going to really try and I might fail. And I'm not going to feel sorry for myself. I'm going to be strong.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Mother, like a motherhugger is another common one. And I love that because that's what write like a motherfucker means. That's what that column. I don't know if any of you have read that column, but that's what I was driving at when I was writing about writing this letter to this writer who's saying, I'm a writer, but I can't write and I want to be David Foster Wallace, but I'm not David Foster Wallace and I'm 26. And why aren't I famous yet? I was saying, shut up and write like a motherfucker. And I think that applies to almost any kind of work we do.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “How wild it was to let it be a warrior for love, write like a motherfucker. I mean, you know, Actually, write like a motherfucker has become such a thing that I didn't even, it's not even brave enough. Like it's not one of the quotes I'm brave enough. I write about it in the introduction. But my favorite thing is that my book signings, people will come up to me and say, you know, will you please write engineer like a motherfucker? Or, you know, before a motherfucker?”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Well, you know, what's interesting to me, and I say this in the introduction to Brave Enough, that I really believe that, of course, the writer creates these words and they're his or her sentences on that page, but the minute we release them into the world, they really belong to the readers. And so I didn't know And I love that way that we can own beauty that other people have made because it lives within us then. You know, those quotes that mean something to me that other writers have written, it's not so much about their intention, it's about the meaning I took from it.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “I made their life too easy. No, I'm kidding about that because, of course, I'm the most imperfect mother. But what I mean is I think that no matter what your circumstances are, you always have challenges, right? I mean, this is always, I mean, the human struggle is true whether you're living in difficult circumstances or a life of luxury. And we all know that.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “Profound joys of my life is that my kids do not have that experience. I remember a few years ago, I told my kids about my father being abusive to me. I mean, it was more than a few years ago. My kids were maybe five or six when I first told them that my father had battered my mother and had been physically abusive to me. And my kids actually thought that I was joking because they didn't understand that adults can behave that way. They didn't really actually understand that that could be true because all of their encounters with adults had been, you know, people behaving like you should behave. And so I love that we're not replicating that. And I think that, of course, like any humans, my kids will have their own challenges. And maybe one of them is just going to be like having the perfect childhood that I gave them being the perfect mother.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “And I was like, my God, what an uninteresting life you have. So it is kind of funny because you're right. I protect my kids. I want my kids to not be witness to, you know, I had a lot of traumatic things actually happen to me at a young age. And one of the great...”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “Yeah, that's really tricky because my kids are like, they have the opposite life than I had as a child. My kids are just basically little cupcakes, you know, and nothing, you know, my son a couple years ago, my kids go to public school, but a couple years ago we were thinking of applying, we applied to this private school, and my son had to fill out the application. And even though he was like 10, they were like, you know, describe, you know, a challenge that you've overcome. And my son was like, I don't have any, I haven't had to overcome anything, mom, you know, and he was like so upset that nothing bad had happened to him.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “Let me show you. See, so it's an undone zipper glued two pieces of felt bought at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. And I love the idea of unzipping. I think a lot of people, they think of going on stage and having this kind of formal interview as the time that you're going to be guarded or try to present a certain public face. And while we're doing that, I think I'm also hoping we get something beneath the surface that we can sort of unzip in some ways.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “So, what this necklace is, and I was telling Tim before we went on stage, that I tend to be one of the writing assignments, my best writing prompts that I give when I'm teaching writing is I talk about the use of objects and talismans in narratives. I think that it can be a really powerful source of story. For example, if I made you all right now, take out your keychain and then write the story of every key, you would all have written something really interesting and something very telling about your life. And so when I do things like this, like talk to Tim Ferris, you know, before you all, I always want to have like a talisman of what I hope happens. And so this necklace that just made disappear, what it is is that it's a zipper that's just unzipped and it's just glued to a piece of felt.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “I think my necklaces messing with it, so I'm going to put it backwards. I'm sorry you don't any longer get to see the beauty of my necklace, but.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “And what I realized too is that I already gave them the best thing I have to give them. That book, Tiny Beautiful Things that Saved Somebody's Life, Wild that somebody saw themselves in. I gave them that thing already and any further interaction with me will only be a reiteration of what I tried to achieve in those books. Is my microphone messing up?”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “I don't have the final answer yet. I think it's in progress for me, but I will say what I've learned in these years since I began writing the Deer Sugar Column and Wilde, and even with my first book Torch, it was read by fewer people than Red Wild, but I still had a whole batch of people who were coming to me after reading that book saying you told my truth. You said something I feel and no one else has ever said it. And that's a really powerful kind of intimate connection. And I think that for me early on, I felt like, okay, we share this thing, so now we have to share more. We have to correspond or email each other or be friends or yes, I have to meet you for coffee and talk about it. You know, that just became unsustainable, you know, with Torch, you know, the five people who read the book, I could meet them for coffee. But with Wild, that became unsustainable.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “Books have the power to not only remind us of our own humanity, but the humanity of others too. And that's for me a spiritual experience. That is what”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “Sadly, I think not read by a lot of people now, but for some reason I came upon this book when I was about 14. I don't know how it got into my hands, but it did. And it was a book that was written, I think, in the 30s. And it was, you know, this book that really about a reality that was so far from my own. And yet when I was this teenager, I really could feel like the power of narrative, the power of inhabiting the life of another human. And I do think that all kinds of art gives us that ability to inhabit another human's experience, but none do it so well as books. That is literature's thing, right? Subjective truth. We get to be inside the mind of that young woman who's hiking the Pacific Crest Trail when she's 26 or the man who's in the midst of a divorce, whatever that situation is, we get to be in it. And so, you know, I do think that”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “Yeah, so many books. Well, one of the things, I think I wrote this in Wilde that I felt that books were my religion. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I do think that there are all kinds of ways that I get spiritual solace or a sense of connectedness with others or a sense of comfort or consolation. But I would say that books have been the main one. And the first book that came to mind when you just asked me that is Dalton Trumbo's novel, Johnny Got His Gun. Have any of you read that book?”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “Saying your book changed my life, your book saved my life. And so it's really the highest praise I've ever gotten from a reader in any way.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “That's amazing. Thank you, Charles. It's right up there with just a very small handful of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, actually. I know the power of literature because books have saved my life too. And it was always my intention from the very beginning when I first, when I was like six and learned how to read and felt the beauty and the truth that words on the page can make. I wanted to join that club. I wanted to be somebody who would make that kind of beauty and truth in the world too. But I didn't know if I ever would be there, you know, and I didn't know what would be the mark that I would reach that I could say, yes, I did that too. And I will say it's that thing. It's people coming up to me.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Conferences Was the tipping point for the four hour work week way back in 2007? In the creative process of a famed author Jumpstarting your own creation creativity, note taking, list making Handle hard emotions. This episode is for you. We cover a lot of ground. My guest is Cheryl Strade. Cheryl Stray on almost all the socials, and I will keep this short because I have Int Recorded live.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “slashed him. Check it out. And germs, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, whatever it might be, that you can apply to your own life and test as soon as today, tomorrow. Are the tools and tactics that count, whether they come from the world of entertainment, military, or other? And there are many different buckets of other. This particular episode was a blast to record. in front of a 2,000 plus person crowd at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “This episode is brought to you by AG1, the Daily Foundational Nutritional Supplement that supports whole body health. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drink ag1.com slash Tim. That's drink ag1, the number one. Drink AG1.com slash Tim. Last time, drink ag1.com.”

    2017-03-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT