The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs.
From Darin Strauss
All writers have their own pet commandments.
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.
My wife and I live in Brooklyn, N.Y., not too far from where my Long Island childhood happened.
Surprisingly, Manhattan casts a sort of undersized shadow onto Long Island. Where I grew up, everyone seemed totally disconnected from the city - ours could have been any suburb, anywhere - though when traffic was thin, it took us only half an hour to get into midtown.
Memoirs are - memory is - rarely 100 percent accurate. Any autobiography is a construct, ballpark, even unnatural. Private diaries, too, can be unreliable - a detail that matters only if the diary is read.
I went to Aspen right after school and got a freelance gig writing articles for the 'Aspen Times.' I was their nightlife correspondent. They paid me fifty bucks an article.
I delivered Chinese food on Long island, which is pretty depressing. I lived with my parents and did that for six months. I got a job a few towns over from mine so I wouldn't have to see people from my high school.
I thought, 'I'll come back to New York. I worked for the 'Aspen Times' when I lived in Aspen. I'll work for the 'New York Times' when I live in New York.' It didn't work out that way.
I got a job writing for a financial technology newsletter in Manhattan. I didn't even understand what I was writing about. The newsletter had, like, 2,000 subscribers, and it was $700 a year for a subscription.
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