The Writer’s Calling: Grace

As I mentioned in this post, I want to explore the idea that a writer is called to be a writer. This would be especially true for writers who seek to convey a message, rather than only entertain the reader. Are writers called, in the sense that a minister is called to the ministry?

I, for one, have never felt God saying to me that I should write. At Christian writers conferences they will almost always ask, “How many of you feel the Holy Spirit is calling you to be a writer?” I cannot raise my hand, since I have never felt a direct call to write. I have a burning desire to write, a desire that has intensified and expended over the last seven years. As I look back on my adult life, I realize this desire was in me from the first year after college, when I almost applied for a writing conference scholarship from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. That year I also wrote a poem, a pastiche of “Vincent” by Don McClean.

A few years passed before I again thought of writing creatively. Those were years of business writing, engineering stuff. Hundreds of letters, contracts and specifications for maybe a hundred construction projects, technical reports both long and short, conference paper presentations, a trade magazine article, technical standards, how-to design guides, and marketing materials—brochures, project descriptions, resumes. For years, wherever I was in my work, the writing tasks always seemed to fall to me. Writing became almost second nature, never creative writing (well, maybe some of the marketing materials were creative), but always chances to learn and improve grammar, work on spelling, and learn that different language use is appropriate for different documents and end purposes.

So, when about 1998-99 I got the creative writing bug, and when in 2001 I was diagnosed incurable, I had had twenty-five or more years of training in writing, the training I shunned to the greatest extent possible in high school and college. That’s not a bad apprenticeship. But I’m digressing from my original intent.

Am I called to be a writer? In the absence of a specific statement from God, or a bolt of lightning or some such visible evidence, does my life and writing exhibit the needed grace, gifts, and usefulness? Is the desire within evidence of this calling? Grace, for the writer, would mean embracing writing and loving it to the point where that’s what you want to do. Gifts would be evidence of ability: acceptance of writing by the more knowledgeable and by the intended audience. Usefulness would be the writing having an impact on the audience.

Just dealing today with grace, I suppose I would define the grace to be a writer as embracing all that is required of a writer, and deciding that is for you. If you learn what a writer must go through, and balk at some part of it, but go on to try to publish just the same, maybe you don’t have the writer’s grace. Sometimes I get so angry at all the hurdles to becoming published, I sometimes wonder whether I have the grace needed. But, I believe I can change, and perhaps learn to embrace what now I tolerate and which once I loathed.

Does a writer grow in grace? I hope so.