Dear Sugar: How Do I Survive The Critics?
Dear Sugars
WBUR
4.5 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Sugars take on the pain that comes with being judged for one's work, and the ways in which we can learn from even the most brutal of judgments. They're joined by the writer George Saunders, who helps field a question from an author feeling crushed by first reviews. Saunders recalls his own first experience of being publicly condemned, which sent him down to his basement for three days.
Transcript
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| 0:44.2 | Dear Sugar is supported by... |
| 0:50.3 | The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick. |
| 0:56.1 | Sugar is here, the both of us, speaking straight into your ears. |
| 1:01.2 | I'm Cheryl Strayed. |
| 1:02.7 | I'm Steve Almond. |
| 1:03.9 | This is Dear Sugar Radio. |
| 1:06.2 | Oh, dear song, won't you please? |
| 1:11.6 | Share some middle. Oh dear song, won't you please? |
| 1:18.6 | Share some little sweet days with me. |
| 1:34.3 | I check my bellbys every day. Oh, in this sugar, you've seen my way. |
| 1:42.3 | Dear Sugar, I am a writer struggling to accept my first bad reviews and then somehow let them go. It's a privilege problem. My first book is making its way in the world, |
| 1:46.3 | and that is a gift I'm grateful for. But it is a piece of work so close to my heart, so deeply personal, |
| 1:52.5 | that every time I receive a negative review, I feel it like a punch in the gut. I begin to think |
| 1:58.1 | that my book is not only mediocre, it is bad, a worthless bunch of words |
| 2:02.4 | that was never good enough to publish. This process is only just beginning, and if I'm lucky, |
| 2:08.0 | I'll write more books and will get more bad reviews, but I have to ask, is there a way through |
| 2:13.1 | these devastating feelings? Is there some shortcut, some magical technique to make it hurt less? How do you guys |
... |
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