Going Home: My Journey Back to Science Fiction

 

By D.T. Powell

Many writers have been telling and writing stories since childhood.

I am not one of those people.

Growing up, I loved fiction in most any form: books, movies, audio dramas. The library was a wonderful place where I found new stories to love and spend time with.

Over the years, I discovered a love for Science Fiction. Other worlds, other people, robots, computers, spaceships, places brimming with beauty and wonder. All of it thrilled me and pulled me back to what King David said in Psalm 19:1-4 (KJV), “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

When I was twelve, God used Science Fiction to help me understand the true joy of my salvation. I spent the next ten years looking for a way to show others what God had done for me. I tried everything from visual art to music. But nothing worked. I even went to college to get an art degree, because that’s what I thought God wanted. Then I got cut from the art program during my sophomore year because I wasn’t good enough.

Not knowing what else to do, I finished my college career as a business major. Only once I was out of college and unemployed for four months did I stop trying to do what I thought made sense and listened to what God had in mind for me. That was when I started writing. For several years, the only thing I wrote was fanfiction. I spent time with the people and places God had used to help me understand myself and my world.

Then I got the nudge to step out into original fiction too. And I fell back into the same trap I had just escaped a few years earlier. I thought I knew what God wanted, so, instead of asking Him, I dove headfirst . . . into writing original Fantasy. After all, how could I love another Science Fiction the way I loved the one God had already used so powerfully in my heart and life?

I wrote multiple Fantasy manuscripts, and while they were fine stories, they were all missing that special spark of inspiration. My fanfiction work, on the other hand, became a place of wonder. The stories I told (and continue to tell) there grew me in ways nothing else could have.

A few years later, God made clear that I was writing my original fiction from a place of fear, not love. When I decided to set that fear aside, God brought me through writing a life-changing Contemporary novel. And then He made clear it was time to go home. Back to Science Fiction. Back to the genre that most thrills me and constantly brings my thoughts and heart to my incredible Creator.

Now, I write both fanfiction and original fiction in the same genre. Every day I spend in Science Fiction is a challenge to trust God’s leading as He brings me to and through the next step in whatever I’m writing. And I cannot wait to see what He has waiting for me as I make my writing home in the genre God used to change my heart.

What about you? Are you writing what thrills you and brings your thoughts and heart to your incredible Creator?

 

 Photo by Cihat Ata on Unsplash

D. T. Powell has loved stories since before she can remember, and it was one of those stories that God used to change her life and prompt her to start writing. In addition to writing original contemporary and speculative fiction, as well as book reviews for a magazine, she has actively contributed to the fanfiction community since 2013. Her original work has been published by Writers Digest, Clean Fiction Magazine, Twenty Hills Publishing, The Order of the Pen Press, Worldsmyths, and Cadence Writing. She enjoys reading, playing pickleball, and the occasional video game. You can find her online as dtill359. Her favorite verse is Psalm 126:5, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”