Dear Sugar

I like to read advice columns. They give me the same thrill I got when I went into group therapy at age 27 and realised for the first time in my life that everyone out there has some kind of problem. Before that, I would look at people on the street and assume that because they were pretty, they were also happy. Or that because they had a job and a credit card, they also had it all figured out.

In group, I saw the faces of people who on the outside were composed and together, and then I heard their stories -- of a husband in a marriage who felt like the tedious day-to-day of his marriage, and his wife's clutter, were like bricks stacking up on a wall between them; of a beautiful woman whose father used to drink, and now her husband, and her, too, with their little baby asleep upstairs; of other people like me who didn't know how to love themselves and felt fated to be miserable until they became that person they could really love.

It let me adjust my measure of what was normal, and begin to recognise that my problems were actually ordinary, and to give up at least a little of the pain I had over being uniquely, especially messed up.

The letters in advice columns provide similar insights -- into other people's central problems. The answers, in the case of a few really talented columnists, are very often touching and kind and wise. Even when the problem in the letter isn't directly related to my experience, there's usually a universal lesson in the answer. My two favourite columnists right now are Cary Tennis in Salon and Dear Sugar in The Rumpus. Both are creative writers in addition to their columns. In one column, responding to a young writer worried about the ways she wouldn't be good enough, Sugar coined a warcry for writers in one of her columns that rightly caught on among her readers:

You can read the original Write Like A Motherfucker column here. And here's another to a writer wondering whether they'll ever fit into the writing world.

I hope one day I can write as beautifully Cary and Sugar. To get there, I'd better write like a motherfucker today :)