If writing is a calling, similar as how we think of the ministry as a calling, then the writer must somehow recognize the calling. I’ve been thinking about the same three items that have sometimes been used to describe a minister’s calling: grace, gifts, and usefulness. Today I’ll look at the latter.

Question: How do you know if you have the calling to be a teacher?
Answer: They ask you to teach, and you don’t fall flat on your face doing it.

Question: How do you know if you have the calling to be a lawyer?
Answer: You have the ability to understand the law, and are able to use that ability as an advocate.

Question: How do you know if you are called to be a writer?
Answer: Your writing makes a difference for someone.

That’s what “usefulness” would seem to be to me, in the context of a writer. If you write, and no one ever benefits from it, are you called to be a writer? This may not mean publication (though that is certainly one manifestation of making a difference and hence usefulness). Emily Dickinson had almost nothing published in her lifetime (mainly because she didn’t seek to be published), yet her poetry has influenced millions after her death. For every Stephen King or Jerry Jenkins there are probably thousands of writers who have the calling, yet never achieve acceptance from a major publisher.

So how would I define usefulness, if not acceptance by a major publisher. I think I would define it as, after the writer applies the grace given and the gifts given and enhanced through education and experience, the writer looks at his composition and decides, “Somebody other them me needs to see this.” Now, who that somebody might be, either a loved one, or near a acquaintance, or a critique group, or the people that reads the local newspaper, or an agent, or a publisher, I’m not prepared to narrow that down. It may not even be someone in the present, but someone in a future year, or age.

Of course, in making the decision “Somebody other than me needs to see this,” the writer should not be fooled or limited by his own experience. Such a claim should be made in the full knowledge of what good writing consists of, and a judgment by the writer and others that this indeed should be read by others. This has been the toughest part for me, finding others who know good writing, and who are not my relatives or close associates to look at my work and say whether it measures up.

Usefulness. The third yardstick I need to use, alongside grace and gifts, to know whether I have a calling to be a writer. I’m starting to acquire enough independent reviews to believe that I have the call to be a writer. The next step: submit those three proposals and series sell sheet, and see what some decision makers in the publishing world think. Stay tuned.

Grace, gifts, and usefulness. These are means by which a minister recognizes the calling of God to be a minister. Last post I considered how these may also mark the calling of one to be a writer, and what grace would be for the writer–not the grace that saves you, but the grace that is evidence of a calling.

Today I’ll consider gifts. It seems to me the writer should certainly have specific gifts:
– to be able to find, combine, and manipulate words to communicate effectively
– to be able to tell a story in a compelling manner
– to have ideas, things to write about, or
– to be able to communicate the idea of another with words.

The use of words may or may not be an inherent gift for the writer. We generally call this craft, and it ranges from the breadth of vocabulary to correctness of grammar. Grammar can be learned. Vocabulary can be expanded. Dictionaries and thesauruses can be consulted. Perhaps this is a “gift” the writer can learn.

Or maybe not, or only partially. Much learning in this area is no doubt possible, but I wonder if some special inherent gift of words is still essential. Knowing the words and grammar, and knowing how to use them effectively seem to be two different things. I don’t want this to sound snobbish, as if I’m saying unless you are born to be a writer you can’t be a writer. Not at all. Appropriating teaching and expansion of skills should be possible. But I think some kind of gift for words should be present to produce the spark that later ignites the tinder and kindling of ideas in presence of desire.

Yet, words are not enough. Story-telling is critical. Is this something learned, or something given to the writer? I wish I knew. You can certainly study plots, and learn the essentials of a story told in a way to capture an audience. Or, with non-fiction, you can learn how the “plot” is the organization, and how to pace the material to keep the reader’s interest. Either way, both fiction and non-fiction require their own brand of story-telling. As with words, how much of this is a gift given and how much is a gift learned is beyond my ability to say.

The transformation of an idea into a story first requires the capturing of an idea; recognition of something in life that registers on the brain, which then says, “Ah ha! I must write about that!” Or, when someone says, “I have this idea for a story”, to be able to recognize whether that is truly a workable story or not. Not all ideas can be made into stories (though maybe more can than we realize). I ask (myself) again: how much of this is a gift given, and how much is learned by experience, by trial and error? It seems much is gift, which can be enhance by experience and trial and error.

I may just be talking to myself here, because I’m not sure about all this. But it seems to me, at this stage of my pondering, that a writer must have certain inherent gifts, of language ability and of story-telling and idea recognition, which become the sparks that eventually must be built on and expanded to fuel the finished product.

Next time: usefulness.

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.