Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've written fiction... but the nonfiction has always received the most attention.
Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in.
Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.
I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.
I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
I read almost exclusively nonfiction when I read, because even though it's harder to find a great true story, when you find one, the idea that it actually happened is immensely powerful.That's what moves me the most.
I've always been a writer. I hope to continue to write books until I can't anymore.
I always squirm when I read what's called 'creative nonfiction,' and the writer is lobbing gobs of emotion and language at the world, hoping some of it will stick.
I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.
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.