Author: Jim McCrory

Whilst Sir Walter Scott took a trip to Stratford Upon Avon, Li, a Business Studies student at Glasgow University was having a road trip with friends to see The Glenfinnan Viaduct. That same year, Kioko, a middle-aged widow was on a flight from Tokyo to Canada. Her mother several years earlier flew from Tokyo to…

There is a beautiful piece of cinematography in Nikita Mikhalkov’s movie Urga, where one is presented with a vast panoramic field of emerald grass. There’s movement in the distance. The image gets closer and closer and slowly coming into focus. It’s accompanied by the sound of rumbling hooves and snorting. Wafts of agitated dust float in a…

With the lamp suppressed The universe enters in The child gapes with awe I suppose it must have been the late summer. I had been spending the month on the idyllic Island of Bute on Scotland’s west coast. We had a cabin with no running water or electricity. My job was to go and fill…

In 1999, I found myself working in Norway. One evening as I sat looking over the fjord. I felt a deep sense of melancholy when Enigma’s Return to Innocence played out the drama; an image and sensation that no golden-hour shot could ever capture. I watched this large golden ball of compressed energy close in…

Two things strike me regarding the hero’s journey: one normal, the other, inspiring. Creative writing features these two aspects. The hero goes through a series of obstacles. Think Peter Rabbit who was specifical warned about entering Mr McGregor’s Garden. And Wow! Everything went wrong. I recall the images, peter trembling like a crapping dog. But…