American - Writer | October 3, 1970 -
My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.
Sara Zarr
FatherMusicSchoolParentsGrowing
I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.
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My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.
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I don't want to pretend like I'm some intellectual person who understands Flannery O'Connor.
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When my characters are questioning things, it's not me leading up to an answer; it's me asking those same questions and letting the characters' lives unfold and seeing where it takes them.
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I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. We were part of a church that belonged to the California Jesus movement.
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I always felt that church is where I'm going to find my community and people to live my life with.
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Making lists of favorite things is, for me, a task ridden with anxiety. What if I've accidentally excluded something I love? What if I discover something new tomorrow that I love even more?
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I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't notice it until we've written three or four books.
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Is it good, bad, or neutral to recognize thematic patterns in your own work? When it comes to recurring themes, I'm of the mind that knowledge is probably not power, at least in terms of the work.
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Readers want a story, not a pattern. It's the specifics of a story that make it really ping our various reader radars.
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My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.
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