Fiction is where any writer gets their feet wet. As children, we make up stories all the time, sometimes for amusement, sometimes to try and get out of trouble, sometimes to explain the strange shadows and odd noises of night to ourselves.

For me, fiction was a way to harness my imagination, a way to escape into a better world, and a way to entertain. But somewhere along the way, just as we lose our appreciation for the toys of childhood, fiction and I parted ways. I wanted deeper truths, and face it, in a world with so many stories, I didn't need to make up anything. Fiction was just a distraction, getting in the way.

Yet I didn't -- couldn't -- stop reading it. And my admiration for literature did not waiver, from great works like Dickens' Great Expectations, right on down to the seemingly pedestrian pulp mysteries of Raymond Chandler. Stories moved me, said things to me, that few pieces of non-fiction ever did. Why, though?

I was returning to college during this timeframe. As a last minute addition to my schedule, I added a class on English Literature. My theory was that it would be an easy squeeze; I read anyway, this way I'd get credit for it too. This choice became one of the happiest accidents of my education; the instructor -- playwright Gretchen Icenogle -- opened to me the answers I had been searching for for a long time: fiction is not just escape, but economy too. In the real world, it is rare that any series of dramatic events takes place to so few people in such short spans of time. Fiction is a metaphor writ large, a shorthand for telescoping bigger ideas.  

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