I’ve\u00a0already got a whole lot of nonfiction in my life, but none of it\u2019s the fun kind.<\/p>\n
I am a freelance technical writer by trade, and depending on whether I\u2019m in the feast or famine portion of my employment cycle, I spend large portions of my days working on behalf of companies that build cell phone towers. It involves a lot of research and letter writing and watching the calendar to see if anyone has gone beyond their FCC-mandated response times.<\/p>\n
Roughly 90 days after\u00a0I’ve\u00a0been assigned a project, I get to cobble together a report that either says \u201cGo for it. No one cares if you build it there\u201d or \u201cRun, don\u2019t walk, from this location. Do it! Do it now!\u201d<\/p>\n
Whoever coined the phrase \u201cthrill a minute\u201d obviously had this very specific profession in mind.<\/p>\n
Of course, I kid, though there is a grain of truth in every joke. (Especially the hurtful ones.) Even though what I do for a living is not as sordid as my teenage self would have hoped, it\u2019s decent pay when there\u2019s work to be had, so I have very little to complain about.<\/p>\n
(Except for the frequency of assignments. I mean damn people. I have worked for you for years. Somebody help a brother out. Put me on staff. Did you not read the previous paragraph? I will do sordid things for a steady paycheck and health insurance. All I\u2019m sayin\u2019 is think about it.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, that\u2019s my current relationship with nonfiction. Boring, but necessary.<\/p>\n
If I had my choice, though, I\u2019d be writing cool shit, like Annie Jacobsen\u2019s book about Area 51. I love the idea of finding a weird, off-beat topic and researching the hell out of it until I have enough to sketch out a narrative. I want to be the guy who brings together information from all over the map and then uses his literary skillz to help you make sense of it.<\/p>\n
That sounds like fun to me, and it seems a hell of a lot less stressful than just making things up on the fly.<\/p>\n
When you write a piece of nonfiction, the onus is on you to make it interesting, but at least no one can blame you if the facts are dull. But if the characters and situations originated in your brain, that lame-ass story is totally on you.<\/p>\n
Ideally, one day, someone will approach me with an interesting topic and a lucrative offer (because they\u2019re a huge admirer of my fiction, of course), and they\u2019ll send me off for a year or two to research and write and churn out one hell of a good read. Until then, I\u2019ll just keep making it up as I go along. And I\u2019ll begin each new story by whispering the same four semi-encouraging words that have gotten me this far.<\/p>\n
Good luck; don’t suck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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