Writing non-fiction’s a bitch – a truth not universally acknowledged. You’ll hear fiction writers, especially novelists (I’ve written five, published three), going on about their own heroism. How wrenching it is, day after day, to dredge up eternal truths from the dank depths of their souls. One man (it would be a man) even told me writing a novel is “like going to war.” I like to picture him deep in a muddy trench, rats nibbling at his toes, his laptop powered by only the heat from his cojones. Yet another writer maintained it’s the moral rigor of the long fictional haul that drives novelists to drugs and drink. That’s a man with, in addition to possible substance abuse issues, a bad case of post hoc ergo propter hoc. (Actually, it was drugs that drove me to write novels, but that’s another story.)