stories

James’s Blog: Rewriting The Story.

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James’s Blog: Rewriting The Story.

For years I had been labouring under the illusion that I should write short stories, because they were less work than writing novels. I can tell you now that it doesn’t matter how long your story is, a short attention span is a bad thing regardless. Something changed for me last summer, when motivation aligned with idea and I spent the last months of 2018 hammering away at my keyboard, trying to churn out at least one thousand words a day for my magnum opus, the book that they would plant at my grave instead of a headstone. By the end of November I had finished my first draft, just over 120,000 words that were all arranged in an order that told a story. Then I did what any writer worth his or her salt will tell you to do – I walked away from it for a while. Read more

James’s Blog: This Post-Easter Blog is Far Too Long.

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James’s Blog: This Post-Easter Blog is Far Too Long.

Sometimes a song or a story or a poem will generate a powerful emotional response in me by putting into words something that is buried deep within, something I haven’t really given shape to myself yet. This is what art does. Why just the other day I was listening to someone explain how he had been left shaken by listening to a short story that somehow managed to encapsulate his own experience of childhood. Read more

James’s Blog: Skimming the Sun.

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James’s Blog: Skimming the Sun.

I had a thought the other day.

There is really only one story – God’s story.

You and I create stories, but the only bits that will last are those that reflect the heart of God’s story. I don’t mean that only stories that talk explicitly about God are the only ones with any value, rather a tale’s worth depends on how much it reflects the story from which all other stories flow. Give me a yarn spun by an atheist with the scent of heaven in his nostrils rather than another two-dimensional moral diatribe written by someone with a fiery pen and a cold heart.

God’s story burns at the centre of the solar system, orbited by every other story ever created. There are stories that are popular and lauded, but are really nothing more than lifeless, icy rocks spinning out into the infinite void. Then there are others, small and ignored, that rotate so close to the sun that they burn with a lover’s passion and can’t be seen without looking at the source itself.

I hope that, whenever I write and whatever I write, I am in some way honouring the story that keeps me warm at night.

“Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring.”  – St. Columba

James’s Blog: (Mis)Understanding Parables.

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James’s Blog: (Mis)Understanding Parables.

I don’t normally divulge the meaning behind the stories that I’ve written, partly because I don’t want to prejudice the reader and partly because I’m a contrary so-and-so, but let’s talk about the story ‘Border Control’. This one appears in The Second Listening Book and, as usual, I had something deliberate in mind when I wrote it. Read more

James’s Blog: An Opportunity to Reflect.

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James’s Blog: An Opportunity to Reflect.

When I was training to be a minister they made me do something that they called ‘theological reflection’. Each week I had to choose an experience I’d had in the last seven days and write a short reflection on it. I had to ponder over what had happened, how I’d responded, whether I’d do anything different and so on. Read more

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