Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Location: Old New Castle, Delaware
Weather: Warm 57º and sunny
Each time I approach my blog week, I try to think back to some of the concerns of the past few weeks to see if I can offer something of value. Recently I’ve heard published writers talking about throwing in the towel, unpublished writers mourning the unfairness of the query process, and even an editor expressing concern about a contracted author who needs to spend more time writing an exemplary novel and less time blogging and tweeting. I’ve heard from authors with troublesome sales numbers that make it challenging to sell the next book. I’ve talked to others who are tired of getting so little return on the investment and others who are who are coming to grips with the reality that the bestseller list may always elude them.
Why so much angst to balance against those celebrating milestones and triumphs?
There’s no denying that the scales are tipped toward trouble. It made me think of the classic hero’s journey. If you are at all familiar with this epic story structure you know that the biggest proportion of the journey is made up of tests, allies and enemies. It makes sense that the trouble seems out of proportion. It makes the triumph all the sweeter when it comes. If we approach our writing adventure as a journey, the detours and seeming dead ends will not seem as unexpected or as permanent.
My daughter teaches mythology at Wilmington University. I borrowed her class notes to brush up on the classic structure and the parallels between hero’s journey and our writer’s journey amazed me. Over the next few days I’ll talk a little about each step in the structure and we’ll see if it applies to us as writers.
Step One: The Call
This invites the hero into the adventure, offers the opportunity to face the unknown and to gain something of physical or spiritual value. The hero may be willing to undertake the quest or may be dragged unwillingly.
There are several different ways of analyzing the hero’s journey. Sometimes the “ordinary world” is cited as the first step in the journey and that makes sense. It is that ordinary world that informs everything we will write—that made us who we are– as we embark on our journey, but it is the call that starts us on our way. The call is certainly part of the writer’s journey. All of those elements have been present in the stories I hear when writers tell why they decided to write.
Before we look at the other steps I’d love to hear about your call. Were you willing or dragged kicking and screaming into this quest? Are you seeking to gain something physical—like a career—or something spiritual? When you started, did you realize that much of your journey would take you into the unknown? Use the comments to share about your own “call to adventure.”
I’m so glad you’re using this approach to think about writing. Just last night I began reviewing the hero’s journey for a manuscript, so this exercise will have double meaning.
After more than two decades of homeschool mothering, my call to adventure came in the form of an admonition from my husband. “Empty nest syndrome will be a huge adjustment for you next year. Now is the time to begin gearing up for interests you haven’t had time to pursue while raising children. What have you always wanted to do? Something you could get excited about?”
Writing was at the top of the list! 🙂
I’m Alice.
I fell down a hole and found a new world to explore and discover.
I’ve picked up nice stick I’ve found and now I’m poking at things along the road.
Strange, strange things in this world.
Oh what fun!
I got the call when I was six. I wrote a story. The teacher read it aloud. All the kids laughed in the right places. An author was born!
I refused that call, though. I started subscribing to Writer’s Digest when I was sixteen, but I kept waiting to grow up, thinking I had nothing of value to say. (I was right about that–a dumber sixteen-year-old you could not have found.)
When I was thirty-nine it struck me that I WAS grown up. When had that happened? I decided I should get busy (accept the call) sometime before I died of old age.
So I’ve been on the journey ten years, pretty much loving every minute of it. I think I’ve made about sixty bucks a year so far. 🙂 It’s safe to say for me it’s not about the money.
Nikki spent her lunch hours in high school scribbling stories on notebook paper. The heroes and heroines were her friends. Once a week, her friends would gather around her feet and hear about their amazing adventures into far off places and lands. In high school, she did not rank with the popular kids; she had trouble focusing in school; her home life was rocky; but her stories saved her life.
In the beginning I’m not sure I felt called. Rather, I wanted something of my own that would fit into my hectic life. At the time we farmed in the Midwest, dairy and grain, which, trust me, bears little resemblance to living in the country on a hobby farm.
I needed to be available to run errands or pitch in or to make occasional lunches on the fly when we hired extra helpers. With four school-age daughters, each with individual interests and needing rides to and fro, any nine-to-five job seemed out of the question.
The more I thought about writing, the more it seemed the answer. So I read books on it and subscribed to Writer’s Digest. After awhile I got up my courage to submit sample essay columns to a monthly statewide publication I thought needed a lighter touch. Readers liked them, so they hired me (cheaply) to write monthly columns, which I continued for more than ten years. All the while I kept learning, growing, trying.
Along the way we gave up farming and moved across the country, then several times in the West for my husband’s new profession. Our daughters grew up and left home. I attended writers’ workshops and retreats, kept learning, kept growing, and sold some articles. Doors opened.
Now, years later I have written four books published by a Christian royalty-paying publisher, all centered around marriage and parenting, as well as various types of study materials. Now and then I sell an article somewhere. All along, being in good critique groups sharpened my writing and challenged me, kept me accountable. It still does.
I’ve had my share of feeling discouraged and I long-ago abandoned dreams of breaking records for selling the most books. But I am thankful. My husband continues to be supportive and I can sprinkle Gospel seeds on my blog and in all my writing.
If feeling called means feeling an urgency that won’t let go then I am called to write my current project, a book aimed at harried moms. I’m just beginning the query process on that, so it’s another step into the unknown.
I got the call when I was a child, only I didn’t realize it was a call. And I got a kick in the seat of the pants from a friend who in very kind words told me I had “something” and needed to do “something” with my “something”–because if I didn’t, I’d have to deal with her in the Kingdom. Writing and publishing a novel was something too big for me to dream of then.
I want this. And I will continue to pursue it, continue to learn, continue to dream.
I remember at age ten reading a quote by Benjamin Franklin, “If you want to be remembered after you die, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.” I remember thinking either way was a win-win situation: you could have fun living/writing it, and someone else could enjoy reading it. That may not have been a full-blown call, but it was at least the first ring. At age 22, I was deep into writing a novel when I accepted Christ. I decided it would still be a good book, but needed to be written by a mature believer. The next year I got married, and decided I needed a more regular income than writing seemed ready to provide. Over the years, I honed my writing skills producing worksheets for my students, missionary prayer letters for my supporters, and an occasional piece for publication. At 50, I realized that if I wasn’t a mature believer yet, it wasn’t going to happen. Now, at 60, I think one aspect of a call is that it just keeps ringing until it gets answered.
A few days ago, I read something from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest which is so timely for this topic. In brief, he says that “the need is never the call…The call is loyalty to the ministry you received when you were in real touch with Him….you will have to ignore the demands for service along other lines” (March 5).
This doesn’t get me out of doing laundry or dishes, but it helped me narrow my writing focus to what I’m called to write. And it allowed me to cross out goals relating to what I’m not called to write. Such freedom*
I tried to quit yesterday. Thanks for reminding me of the call…and the battle.
My writing started with a daydream that got so complicated that I had to start making notes to keep things straight. When I let my teenage daughters read my notes, they said, “Mom, this sounds like a real book. You should write it.” So I got a book on how to write and sell Christian fiction, adapted the practice exercises to my plot and characters, and ended up selling 5 other books before that one (Crossovers) made it into print.
I owe my unplanned writing career to a church secretary seeking newsletter articles at gunpoint. While my pastors hated writing them, I, the choir director, loved it. People told me they shared my humor with friends and relatives and urged me to write a book. I attended a writer’s workshop where speakers told us to submit our articles for publication. I sent a column to my local newspaper and the editor called for more.
That was the beginning, but it was at my first ACFW conference an author asked for those who needed prayer to line up. I’m not into prayer lines at all, but I almost ran to join this one. As she prayed for me, I received a strong, uncharacteristically lucid sense of God’s calling in my writing.
Today, several years later, as I apply butt to chair and fingers to keys, it’s good to remember that.
“The Call” to write scared me to death. I’d always loved to read, but never gave a thought to writing myself. Then, in March 2007, about 1 month after presenting a workshop that I had only put together to have a ‘second workshop’ at a conference, a writer who has influenced many people’s lives around the world and published several books heard about my idea and told me I had to write the book – and took on a mentoring / encouraging role in my life. I’ll never forget his response when I said “I was thinking maybe a Bible study.” – “Yes, a Bible study too, but this needs to be a book. You don’t have any idea how big this idea is, how helpful it could be, or how badly the church needs this message.”
We need to dream big to get through the rough patches and keep us going, but it took some time for my mind to ‘accept’ the dream – I was too busy being Moses and listing all the reasons I shouldn’t do this.
God had other ideas, and with His prodding and opening doors, I look forward to hearing from people who’s lives are changed after being challenged to move beyond the rote memorization of Bible lessons. Next spring will be my first speaking trip out of Illinois, as I head to Detroit for Iron Sharpens Iron (pray for some publishing employees to head over from Grand Rapids maybe?)
In His Timing!
Oh, and thanks Paul C!