Misha Glenny Quotes

Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It's easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story.

I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

I've been told it's hard to write about singing. I didn't realize that going into it. I might not have tried if I knew!

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.

The biggest challenge in the research process is to let go, to stop, to say enough, and then to reduce all of that beloved labor down to a few succinct paragraphs that shape the background to your narrative. I love research - that's all the fun, especially in the field. To write, however, is to suffer, and my pieces usually come in thousands of words over the assigned length. That's a serious flaw in my writing process - shaping and disciplining the footlockers of material one has so happily gathered.

The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.

The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. And I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into it when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to.

Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it.

The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.

It is far easier to travel than to write about it.

As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging.

But most love poetry is awful; nobody knows how to write good love poetry either. But that's not a reason not to write love poetry. Some of the best poetry ever written has been love poetry, and some of the greatest poetry ever written has been political poetry.

I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.

The hardest period for a writer is the period in-between writing. That's when you can go crazy if you don't allow the creative juices to flow.

I don't bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, 'Look how courageous I am.' But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.

I write a little bit about what it's like to be a female boss in my book [ Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?] and the things I've noticed about that, but by and large, it's just a tough job in general.

Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around.

I think when you're writing from your own life, it's hard because you realize that people have their own assessment of how they look, and they don't know how you will describe them.

In fact, writing for younger adults is tougher. They remember everything and if they spot a problem, they'll be sure to let you know.

Can you write a book and have children at the same time? Yes, if you're content to do it very very slowly.

Writing a book is the most difficult, anxiety-prone aspect of my life because the words that I put on paper are very serious to me.

The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.