Blogging from A to Z Challenge: N is for Non-Fiction

I love reading non-fiction, in particular true haunting accounts. For those not familiar with the genre, those are books written by ghost hunters, mediums, or anyone who’s ever had a brush with the paranormal, in which they write about their true encounters with the other side. I also love true crime, real life accounts of murders and murder investigations.

When 2014 hit, I vowed to myself to write a non-fiction book this year. It could be about my experiences with the paranormal, or about a true crime case, or a missing person’s case, or anything else. The trouble is that non-fiction is completely different from writing fiction. When I write fiction, my research is limited. I may research how certain things work, like weapons I’ve never used or have never seen, or more details about one of my character’s hobbies if it’s not something I’m familiar with, but the majority of the time is spent writing. If I ever managed to finish my book about my paranormal encounters, it would be more or less the same – I was there, so I know what happened, and the majority of the time will be spent writing that down.

But when I did research for a true crime book, I was astonished by the sheer amount of time one can spend researching, without doing any actual writing. I got lost in the thousands of forum posts about missing people, about unsolved murders, and it became impossible to find one case to focus on.

How do you go about writing a non-fiction book? Have you ever written one, or tried it?