Since I wrote last my twenty-two year old daughter graduated from college and got married seven weeks later, on Long Island New York. I've also been preparing a reception for her here on the west coast. The planning, communicating, and logisistical work have sapped my energies, leaving no time for blogging. But I don't care. It's my daughter and my love for her would compell me to climb to the top of Everest, if that would ensure her happiness and growth (assuming a guide and an oxygen tank!).
Keeping up with that and the demands of my course work in Creative Writing has entailed thinking closely about what is most important. Some decisions were easy, like don't plant tomatoes this year. Some much harder, such as putting off an invitation to walk with a friend and baking cookies.
The next four months of work on my Masters of Fine Arts will be the hardest yet. I need to keep doing what I did previously (reading a book a week and writing comments on it plus generating new stories), plus write a 20-30 page critical essay and perfect some of the stories I've written.
When I started this writing journey, I had no idea how arudous it would be to complete a story.
Right now I'm revisiting a story I submited to my faculty mentor in May. I've already done a major revision of it cone, based on her comments. Then I submitted it to our workshop with fellow students when we met in July in Santa Fe. And each of these drafts submitted entailed probably four versions of it. Yet I'm revising it once again. We're talking about the eighth or tenth draft.
This is one of those times writing does not feeling very productive. I'm not seeing anyone smile at the food I've served nor seeing an English student beam because they've learned to say a needful phrase correctly. I'm not seeing the yellow of a daisy plant I dug into the dirt and sprayed with a hose daily.
So it was good this morning to think again about calling, or vocation. Calling comes out of identity, an identity I find in pursuing God and what He wants for me. I believe I am called to be a writer and thi sis my unique vocation. As Benner puts it, we need to "work out with God the truth of our being." (p.98-99)* So writing is not merely what I do, but who I am called to be. It requires being grounded in the self that God made.
I did not know when I started that how much writing would demand of me, not just in money and time, but psychologically and spiritually. The first inkling that wrioting was my calling came out of my own joy in writing and affirmation of that gift from the community. It started with feeling God's pleasure in me as I wrote. Yet the development of the gift does not always grow naturally out of my own wishes. Think of Moses, who did not want to go see Pharoh, or of Jonah, who ran way from his calling.
So with me the hard work of editing and revising means missing some of what naturally calls to me, like camping trips I'd like to take, movies I'd like to see, or gourmet meals I'd like to prepare. It means dyigng to self-will and surrendering to God molding me through the loneliness and self-denial it takes to pursue this writing life.
* The Gift of Being Yourself by DAvid G. Benner
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