Green Hills of Africa
Ernest Hemingway

Fiction/Non-Fiction – I love Hemingway’s fiction yet find his non-fiction ponderous and tiresome. Conversely, I relish Joan Didion’s non-fiction and Gore Vidal’s essays, but have never been entranced by their fiction. Some bakers can cook and some cooks can bake, but have you noticed how seldom it is you meet someone who purports to be both? Different skills, different techniques are required by each discipline to excel. And yet, writers and readers commonly think of writing as writing – it’s all just words and sentences, after all; it’s all just eggs and butter. While writing fiction and non-fiction does require some interchangeable talent, there’s something else, too, that’s necessary: a convertible approach to storytelling.