When Is Your Writing a Calling?

“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” 

― Frederick Douglass

Sometimes lately, I'm just bowled over by all the things I'm being offered within this pandemic.

It's actually a bit off target to say that writers get a gift of solitude from the lockdowns, isolation, and masking. Most of us need a rhythm of writing time (usually private but not always ... I've written some good things while trying not to hear the "kids" of whatever age) and interconnecting. The surprises and frictions of human contact help move the pieces of thought and emotion around, to the point where "we have to write about something."

But wrestling with meditation, deliberate choices, and targeted insight have been my "sports" lately. I've learned how my family of origin shaped and shapes my fiction and poems, in ways I hadn't realized before. I've gone back in time way farther than the catastrophic house fire that I usually see as the trauma marker for my novels. A memoir's been slowly taking shape, one often-painful realization at a time, as I confront how I've threaded the loom of my woven life.

The isolation of the coronavirus pandemic has also taken me to lectures via Zoom that I wouldn't otherwise have attended (too far to go, too long in the car, too costly) and to discussions I might back out of in person. It's thrown me face to face with my reluctance to take political action, and challenged me to find ways I can act effectively from my desk. It's shown me how frivolous a lot of my expenditures of the past have been -- fun maybe, but now it's time for a serious stage, testing whether each concern relates to a First World Problem (many do) and laughing more often about those.

There are some things I know I'm "called" to write. Let's not try to name the Caller. Let's pay attention instead to writing as the next right action. There is a form of worship and music named call-and-response. That's what I'm hearing, and singing, and if my throat gets a bit scratchy now and then, there's always a spoonful of honey waiting. And a glass of iced tea with mint.

Because when it's a calling, my only answer is yes.

What about for your writing life? How are you uplifting the world -- and how is it cradling you today?