I've written essays before and loved it, but factual non-fiction makes me shudder in fear. Actually having to know what you're talking about? And back it up with research? No way, dude.

See, I think all of the above is a fair bit easier than making up stories out of your own head. Out of nowhere. Which is a concept that terrifies me.

Compared to that: research? Bit of fun.

And I say this while spending my evening referencing.

Making up stories and backing them with solid research is my idea of a good time.

::iz whackjob::

Making up stories = fun!

Getting them out of my head and making them internally consistent = kinda nerve-wracking!

I write both, but I am rather the Johnny Drama of the publishing world. Y'all missed the story about the bulimic pedophile, right? Kidding.

I've sold magazine non-fiction, of course, but I'm working on a non-fiction book proposal. I'm mainly paralysed by trying to figure out just how much information to put in it.

Research = fun!

I like looking up things, but I don't think I'm very good at integrating things into my work so far.

I've sold magazine non-fiction, of course, but I'm working on a non-fiction book proposal.

Same here (well, similar - my commissions have been a couple of newspaper-based pieces and a fun little column for a BBC website). I'm finding the difference an interesting thing. With opinion pieces, I find the difficulty is in being entertaining and sustaining the style. Whereas the book project is worrying me in terms of sustaining the topic. Particularly where it crosses into areas that I know very little about.

That's the hardest thing about research-- that urge to put in Every! Shiny! Detail! It tends to doom historical writers more than anyone else, I think (I'm looking at YOU, Diana Gabaldon...) but everyone is vulnerable.

But yeah, it's why I've resisted doing anything hardcore historical, because I'd be like a magpie, distracted by the shiny.

I'm pretty lazy -- I like to know just enough about something to write it believably. Which is why I'll probably never tackle something like writing a guy on an oil rig. Or a sixteenth-century geisha.

I also cheat like mad -- for historical details I like to get an overall sense of a time, and for that movies like The Age of Innocence or even Bram Stoker's Dracula were what I looked at when I was beginning the (now shelved) vampire book.

Barb beat me to the every.shiny.detail thing (and also the Gabaldon thing. Although for my favorites of hers, the first two, she had never been to Scotland).

I do compromise, though. For a tale set in the twelfth century I used a dictionary and thesaurus published in the 1950s. It lent just enough of an antiquated, out-of-time air to the story without making it period-perfect and thus not understandable to present day readers. Tricks. Some of them work.