It takes years to become a writer: Cheryl Strayed

Grace Paley said that she would write so she could taste life twice – she’d have the experience and then relive it in writing. I think that that’s true for me, too.
I couldn’t have written this book at 26. I wasn’t yet the writer who wrote Wild. It takes years to become a writer. I had to throw myself into that experience and then I had to grow up to understand what it meant.