Darin Strauss Quotes

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying.

It's scary to not know when your next job is coming, and that is a daily fear when you are trying to act full-time.

Getting to the point where I was ready to write a book has been about a 20-year journey of being, really honestly, too afraid to try - which I think is pretty common for people who are trying to write a large piece of fiction.

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it.

It's so funny because all those years I was working, I basically always felt that whatever job I was doing would probably be the last one I would get. I really never thought that I stacked up with the other girls.

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.

A lot of people don't like to spend money on a journal because they're afraid to wreck it, which is understandable. I buy beautifully made leather-bound journals because I have lost my fear of the blank page.

When I finish a book, I always fear that I'll never write again. It takes a lot of time. You always think if you could just do something else - but nothing else makes me as happy.

The hardest thing about writing, for me, is facing the blank page.

There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.

As a writer, a blank page will humble the hell out of you. It always does, and it always will.

When you are a freelancer, you are always looking for a next job. There is always struggle.

I was on 'Gilmore Girls' for seven years and had a couple decent years after that. Then, two years of almost nothing. I had jobs here and there, but I got very, very scared.

When you're writing is when the "god should I just drop this" feeling can hit. When you're editing is when the "god this is awful and I've wasted everyone's time and money and will be revealed as a fraud" feeling can hit.

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

These poets (fans of whatever) should be contacting other young poets on their way - not those who have made it, who sit on a star and then have plenty of problems: usually no money, usually the fear their own writing is going down the sink hole.

It's just as easy for me to be building a fence somewhere and scraping by on unemployment in between doing a guest star spot. I've been there.

I always feel very afraid as I work on books. It's just so hard to write a decent book!

I know that people hate me. And I know I'm just a hack journalist and what we do on 'Lifestyles' isn't what you would call television brain surgery.

I've gone through long periods of time when there's no work for me. You wait for the next job to come along, and when it does, there's never a consideration about whether you do or don't do something.

Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.

The worst thing is the blank page at the start. Then the horrible things written on the blank page. Then deciding whether or not to throw out those horrible things: lame scenes, lame characters, bad ideas.

You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.