Friend,
I am glad to hear about the joy you’ve found in writing. You ask if this is not a sign that you are meant to make of writing your life’s occupation. I don’t know. Is writing your vocation? If I may borrow the words from another author friend: “Vocation is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s great need.” You have found gladness, but are you writing to the world’s great need? The world’s great need will be met when you write the one novel you came into this world to write. It is the one that scares you the most, the one you think no one will publish and if it is published then no one will read and if it is read then no one will understand, except perhaps another soul like yours. Spend your life trying to write this one book. You may never get there. What matters is that you get closer and closer to it with every book you write. Direct your life so that on your deathbed you can say I never gave up trying. Don’t be afraid of failure. And if you fail, look for the door that opens to the place you were looking for all along. Have the courage to write with beauty. Let your prose strain towards poetry. Sometimes there is no other way to say what you need to say. But remember always the honest beauty of bread and water. Believe in the invisible. Have an unshakeable faith in the existence of the soul, yours and the person you write for. If people call your writing religious because of this, so be it. Find others who have made or are on the same journey and cherish them as fellow travelers. Rejoice in their effort as if it were your own. There is no room for envy on this trip. Build a harbor to protect your gift, but make sure your daily catch comes from the open ocean. Find a job that can be friends with and not jealous of your vocation. If you are fortunate enough to make a living from your writing, you’ll need to be even more attentive to your calling, for its voice is hard to hear amidst the clanging of praise. Be lighthearted but don’t forget the seriousness of it all. The tragedy and glory of life is that it can be squandered and loss and waste are real. Be humble. Let your vocation be a prayer no one hears but you. Important as your writing is, it is not your whole purpose. Most of all, be open to love and be grateful for it in whatever form it comes. And if love doesn’t come, love nevertheless. Love, its gladness and its pain, will show you what the world most needs.
