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Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.
There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.
If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.
I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.
I don't think the potential for comics in nonfiction has been exploited nearly as much as it could be.
I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say.
I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.
Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in.
Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.
