Afterword: Writing as My Calling

We’ve had great conversations about callings and giftings this month. We’ve made interesting distinctions, and I’m going to add to the mix: “purpose.” For me, calling becomes another way of saying how God is beckoning me to understand the purpose my life should take in fulfilling God’s plan (or “will” if we want to get entangled in another term requiring distinctions). In my case I’ve had a distinct moment of spiritual calling, actually a few of them, and unlike in earlier points in my life, I now am doing what I was born to do—term it a calling or my life’s purpose or God’s will or maybe something else entirely. But... when it comes to writing, it gets complicated.

While more an author of popular fiction than serious fiction, Jan Karon explores the concept of writing as a calling in this article.

I talked about the issue of exploring my calling in my last post (if I can just use calling in the sense of what I feel I’m to do with my life—talent, time, and treasure). To sum it up, I do feel a calling to write, but my primary calling is to teach, so I’ve had a hard time balancing the two. But I believe we go through seasons, and I’m entering a season where I feel God is calling me more urgently to write than over the last few years where I’ve done little. In a time of consecration last week when seeking direction on how much I need to push in the direction of writing, a minister said in 2 separate services that God was calling someone to write (only the second & third times I’ve ever heard that from the pulpit), and I connected with that and am pursuing it.

As I said with music, I’m not very good at multi-tasking. It is a challenge for me to balance and prioritize my gifts/calling as a teacher and my gifts/calling as a writer. It takes sacrifice. Stephen King in his writing memoir claims that anyone who calls himself a writer should get in 4 to 6 hours of writing a day. He did this even when he was working full-time before his writing career took off. That challenges me because I’m not even disciplined yet to the act of writing 4 to 6 minutes a day. But with fledgling determination—not reluctance but the painful awareness of the work required—I’m committing this year to more deeply heeding the call to write.