Along Quote by Daniel H. Wilson

I never had a plan to be a fiction writer. It's something that happened to me. Sometimes I think maybe it was my spectacular…

— Deborah Harkness

I did try to write fiction. I wrote 10 novels. And they were all just awful.

— Alexandra Fuller

I started writing nonfiction because nonfiction is well-suited to subjects that, if you wrote them as fiction, people would say, "I don't believe this.…

— Debra Monroe

Fiction has always been a thorn in my side, because I've always wanted to be a writer but I can't seem to really do…

— Sufjan Stevens

When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books.

— Elizabeth Moon

I wrote four novels, but then I realized that the world didn't need me to be a novelist, but the world could use me…

— David Quammen

Going from memoir to fiction was fantastic. I had been afraid to move away from memoir; I'd written some novel drafts, but they weren't…

— Janice Erlbaum

Narrative nonfiction was not my forte. I always wanted to let my imagination run free, and the facts sometimes got in the way. At…

— Douglas Florian

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

— Peter Straub

I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they…

— Elif Batuman

I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.

— Elizabeth Berg

I used to be a freelance journalist, so I had to write fast, but I always found writing nonfiction constraining. I like the freedom…

— Michelle Gagnon