Critically-acclaimed, award winning memoirist, Cheryl Strayed, speaks at the A Writing Room Collective workshop in Hollywood, CA in October, 2024, and much of her talk pertained to the pursuit of art, of writing, of your story—when you are writing for your life. I say, you pursue it because you must, or you will die, piece by piece unto yourself and the emptiness of this world rather than rising up to bask in its abundant riches. Ask yourself the literal and the metaphorical questions both as a writer and as a human being. Ask yourself what needs to die within you for you to live.