BEAUTIFUL WRITERS by Linda Sivertsen
The 2022 memoir-come-writers advice from the voice of the Beautiful Writers podcast.
Having sat on my shelf for probably two years, I finlly picked up Linda Sivertsen’s book Beautiful Writers: A Journey of Big Dreams & Messy Manuscripts - with Tricks of the Trade from Bestselling Authors. I’ll write more about why I picked this up to read in my next edition of Be Curious.
Sivertsen tells the story of going from a college dropout to a successful dogwalker to the stars in LA, only to find herself living, with sometime actor husband Jesse and their son Tosh in New Mexico, in an off the grid lifestyle amongst local Native American people. Sivertsen is highly motivated by climate change and environmental issues, particularly deforestation, so their move to New Mexico is not completely random, but given her strong Californian roots and connections to Hollywood, a little surprising. Possibly the more surprising part of that move was how long they stayed out there (hint: longer than I anticipated!).
Sivertsen dreamed of writing a book about environmental issues - not a small dream in the 1990s and nowhere near as likely to succeed then, as it may do now. She expects the book to take her maybe a year to write.
This book is a memoir of the years it in fact took and the paths she traversed in order to get an agent, then a publisher, as well as the interviews she needed in order to give the book enough credibility for a publisher to take on. The book invariably becomes a series of interviews with celebrities on issues of the heart, their passionate causes and spiritual beliefs. The everyday heroes she had previously interviewed get cut.
What is interesting about this book is the excerpts of interviews about the writing process that are interwoven through the chapters - from authors such as Steven Pressfield, Ann Patchett and Elizabeth Gilbert. This was where I found great nuggets of advice and information.
Sivertsen also talks a lot about meditation, her mentorship under Guru Singh and local Native American elder Thomas One Wolf. Sivertsen has some sort of connection to God, in some capacity, whether that is in the traditional Christian sense or something else, which is fine, except that I found it infused through much of her writing without context - at no stage did I feel she has any genuine connection to whoever God is to her. She certainly would consider herself spiritual, in that way that some people say they are without having demonstrable evidence of it (living off grid does not make one spiritual).
I certainly enjoyed this book in many ways.
However, between the incessant name dropping and the recognition that Sivertsen has no self awareness of her privilege, there are some moments that felt very plastic to me. Sivertsen is no doubt sincere in her thoughts and words, but to me they felt lacking in substance.
(That may be a “west coast” thing, too. I’m an Australian but in all the time I have spent in the United States (a lot), I have always been more comfortable on the east coast than in California. That’s my bias to contend with, though!)
Overall, I am glad I got to reading this and I certainly took plenty from it and made many notes in my commonplace book. If you are thinking about making writing a part of your daily life, you will likely to gather some nuggests of wisdom here too.
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