“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 therein the texture of the thing.”
Joan Didion
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 476.
buy on Amazon
category: creativity, nonfiction, novel, painting, research, sculpture, texture, watercolor, writing
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 176 of The Paris Review, 2006.
nonfiction