Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss
Darin Straussis a best-selling American writer whose work has earned a number of awards, including, among numerous others, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's most recent book is Half a Life, which won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 March 1970
CountryUnited States of America
blank constant dictated freelance hard paths terror understand
Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this - that it's a job?
best people
Often it's the people who know a place least well who write about it best because they see it fresh.
ability alone career choice deprived life love morning romantic shared sisters symbols wake women
After a life deprived of everything from romantic love to the choice of when to wake up in the morning, after 29 years without the ability to have a career or even to be alone at toilet, the Bijani sisters are not symbols but women who have had to live a shared life of constant, quotidian sacrifice.
best forgiving herself himself justifying readers tougher
In the worst memoirs, you can feel the author justifying himself - forgiving himself - in every paragraph. In the best memoirs, the author is tougher on him- or herself than his or her readers will ever be.
concrete desire drives early known narrative order primary reader work writer
In order for a narrative to work, the primary character should have a concrete desire - a need that drives her story - and the story's writer should make this goal known to the reader pretty early in the narrative.
beef great learned mile national per salads square theaters
In Minneapolis, I learned that there are more theaters per square mile than in any U.S. city but New York, and we also had great Midwestern beef in our salads in a plaza overlooking the national headquarters of Target, Inc.
guitarist jam musician perhaps slide trucks
I'm no fan of jam bands. You can take your Gov't Mule, your Phish, your Rusted Root. But Derek Trucks is a special musician - perhaps the greatest slide guitarist who ever lived.
closest five minutes mojo peace twin
I have twin six-year-old boys. Have no mojo. The closest thing to a mojo I have is five minutes of peace.
guess people
I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories.
borrowing few narrative novelist techniques tricks
If the memoirist is borrowing narrative techniques from fiction, shouldn't the novelist borrow a few tricks from successful non-fiction?
invented
I'm very strict in my belief that non-fiction should be truthful, and fiction is for invented narratives.
brings close either particular sets small writer
In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.
characters generally haven
Characters stretching their legs in some calm haven generally don't make for interesting protagonists.
attend characters frequently though
I consider myself a Jewish writer - even if my characters frequently are not Jewish - in the same way, I guess, that I consider myself a Jewish man, even though I don't often attend shul.