Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't do nonfiction anymore. Eventually, you just feel constrained by the facts. You want to go where the words take you, and people's actual lives don't always conform. And you can't know them that well.
Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.
I really strive to bring something new to each book. I don't want to write the same book over and over again.
It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.
I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
I'm always reading several books at the same time, depending on how deeply engrossed in it I am, if it's fiction and if it captures me.
I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.
Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.
Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.