Love What You Do: 9 Professionals Tell Us About the Path to Their Dream Jobs
Darin Strauss; Writer, Half-Life
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Depends when you’d have asked me. I wanted At 14 to be Jimi Hendrix. At 16 I got more sensible and wanted to be Jimmy Page.
What was your path to being a writer?
I wrote a novel, or the first 20 pages of a novel, when i was 11. It was going to be about Frankenstein monsters–a reboot, a world war, a whole army of monsters. The General of the US (There was only one) got the American army into one giant room and had them vote: Uzis or m16s. “Uzis!”
It’s coming out next year from RandomHouse.
(A joke)
Do you like your job?
I like much of it, sure. I’m my own boss, etc.; I’m doing something creative, blah blah. But as Flaubert wrote, fiction is a slow patience. I’d like it to come faster.
What are the hardest parts?
The writing. That’s not me being facetious.
What are the most rewarding aspects?
Being done with the writing. Either is that.
If you could be anything else, what would it be?
A Hendrix/Page hybrid.
