Sharing our Stories by Rebecca Seaton

 Sharing Stories by Rebecca Seaton

I’ve recently been thinking about sharing stories. Last week, my school had a ‘Bedtime Stories’ session: children could stay for an hour after school, with parents if they wanted to come, to put their pyjamas on, get a hot chocolate and listen to their class teacher tell stories. No comprehension questions, no targets or teaching around the text, just teachers reading stories for pleasure.

Sharing stories is important. Although some of us may write for our own personal pleasure, most of us want to circulate our stories in some way.

Sharing our work can happen in a number of ways: we might publish novels using self-publishing or traditional avenues, I’ve also found the discipline of writing for a magazine a useful challenge and an unexpected joy. Authors often discuss the difficulty of getting paid for writing and some find it frustrating when people lend books but don’t buy them. To me, the two wishes, to be paid and to see our stories out there, aren’t that separate. The person who was lent a copy might like it enough to buy a copy for themselves or someone else. They might write a review that fifty other people see. Surely, however, the writer must want their story shared first and foremost. When I read reviews and see people describe my characters, it makes them real, they exist beyond the text. In Stephen’s King’s book, On Writing, he describes this process as a kind of telepathy: simply by putting words on the page, we have transferred an idea, a picture, a world, from our mind to someone else’s.

This process can start as early as sharing drafts. Maybe the image or scenario we’re trying to share just isn’t working. Why not? Our writing group, beta readers or editors can help hone our work and draw out the gold from the raw material.

Sharing the gospel isn’t any different. If I can talk about my main characters with enthusiasm and an intimate knowledge, how much more should I be able to do this with God Himself given his impact on my life? Sharing about God can be the direct sharing of scripture, the good news that we are told to share with others. But it can also be the personal testimony of how we have seen God at work in our day to day lives, the ‘A funny thing happened the other day…’ where we share how our God, the father, saviour and friend we know well, was with us.

This Christmas, why not experiment with a little written telepathy? Your story, whatever that is, isn’t for you alone.

Rebecca earned second place in the 2017-18 Pen to Print Book Challenge with her first novel, A Silent Song. She is currently working on a fantasy trilogy involving a prophet, a dodgy queen and a powerful relic.