“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.”
—Peter Handke

With my first novella, The Last Verdict, releasing in the coming weeks, several people have been asking me why I made the switch from writing non-fiction to writing fiction. First of all, I will continue to write non-fiction as the projects come in. After all, I am still unproven as a fiction writer and even one novella won’t be enough to know.

However, it is true that I hope to write more fiction in the coming years. Perhaps with midlife approaching I am simply looking for something new and exciting. Perhaps the field of religious non-fiction feel saturated and overwhelming. And perhaps I am hoping to write the great novel of my generation. There is probably a bit of Truth in each of these.

More than this, the reason I am writing fiction is because Story engages truth in a way non-fiction could never accomplish. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures”. There is a power that a good story has to speak to and move the hearts of people when convincing their minds seems impossible. It is odd that a made-up story (essential a collection of lies) can more powerfully tell truths (“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” ― Albert Camus).

So that is why I am trying my hand at fiction. I can’t wait to see if the story I have written touches the reader as much as it touched me to write.

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