Friend,<\/p>\n
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\u00c2\u00a0you came into this world to write.\u00c2\u00a0It 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\u00c2\u00a0another\u00c2\u00a0soul like yours. Spend your life trying to write this one book. You may never get there. What matters is that\u00c2\u00a0you 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.\u00c2\u00a0Don’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\u00c2\u00a0write with beauty. Let your prose strain\u00c2\u00a0towards poetry. Sometimes there is no other way to\u00c2\u00a0say what you\u00c2\u00a0need to say. But\u00c2\u00a0remember always the\u00c2\u00a0honest beauty of bread and water. Believe in the invisible. Have an unshakeable faith in the existence of\u00c2\u00a0the soul, yours and the person you write for. If\u00c2\u00a0people call your writing\u00c2\u00a0religious 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.\u00c2\u00a0Build a\u00c2\u00a0harbor to protect your gift, but make sure your\u00c2\u00a0daily catch comes from the open ocean. Find a job that can be friends with\u00c2\u00a0and not jealous of your vocation. If you are fortunate enough to make a living from your writing, you’ll need to be\u00c2\u00a0even more\u00c2\u00a0attentive to\u00c2\u00a0your calling, for its voice is hard to hear amidst the\u00c2\u00a0clanging of praise.\u00c2\u00a0Be 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.\u00c2\u00a0Be humble. Let your vocation be a prayer no one hears but you. Important as your\u00c2\u00a0writing is, it is not your whole purpose. Most of all, be open to love and be grateful for it\u00c2\u00a0in whatever form it comes. And if love doesn’t come, love nevertheless. Love, its gladness and its pain,\u00c2\u00a0will\u00c2\u00a0show you what\u00c2\u00a0the world most needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22,1,46,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty","category-love","category-uncategorized","category-vocation","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}