Career Versus Calling

It's been quite a week.  On Monday I attended a day-long workshop given by the Writers' Union of Canada  called “From Desk to Bookstore: Making the Leap to Writing as a Career.”  It was a very good workshop and covered a variety of topics: getting published in magazines and books for both fiction and non-fiction (very different  because non-fiction involves much more querying and story pitching than fiction), agents, the editor/writer relationship, contracts, etc.

Although I learned quite a bit, I was also able to contribute some information, including a couple of web sites that are excellent resources for publishing in magazines.  One is www.placesforwriters.com which lists links to web sites for magazines in Canada and abroad, as well as offering updated calls for new work and contests.  The other is Duotrope's Digest, an ingenious search engine where you fill in the on line form with details like the genre and length of your submission (as well as other particulars) and -- Voila! -- you are immediately presented with a list of magazines and links to their submission pages.  I have published most of my work using both of these resources.  They are indispensable to any writer.  In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I should mention that both of these web site were brought to my attention by J.J. Steinfeld, a fine fiction writer and poet in Charlottetown. 

As much as I enjoyed the workshop, I have to admit its title gave me pause for reflection.  I never really imagined writing to be my career.  As a matter of fact, although I have been writing on and off for most of my adult life, I rejected the possibility of making it my career.  At the risk of sounding somewhat pretentious, I would have to say, if anything,  I saw it more as a "calling" rather than a "career."  I guess by that I mean writing was something I came back to every so often, mostly as a way to vent frustration, in the course of trying to discover who I was and what I should be doing with my life.  In that way it seemed to be choosing me, rather than the other way around.  It wasn't until 2001, when my wife and I decided to move to Prince Edward Island, that I made the conscious decision to focus solely on my writing with the hope of eventually making it my livelihood.

So, in making this choice, was I also making the transition from "calling" to "career"?  I'm not sure what it is about the word "career", but it somehow implies a sense of conformity and also a limited shelf life.  After all, doesn't one eventually retire from a career?  Whereas "calling" carries a different kind of weight, a sense of destiny that suggests a life-long commitment.

This week I also had the opportunity to reconnect with one of my high school teachers.  His name is included on the page of acknowledgements in my book.  When I was his student I asked him what one needed to do to be a writer.  He looked at me soberly and said that to be a writer one needed to suffer.  Sounds a bit harsh and I have to admit his reply frightened me.  In retrospect, I believe he was telling me that I had to go out and experience life, the joy as well as the suffering, before I could ever write in earnest.  It's only now, when I look back on my life, that I realize that was exactly what I did, that all my years of drifting from job to job and trying to discover my place in life, were somehow preparing me for the writing life.  In my own circuitous way I was answering the call.  Careering toward my career, you might say.

But the big news of this past week is that I finished the last round of copy editing before Fatted Calf Blues goes to print.  I reread the fourteen stories for what felt like the millionth time and listed the last of the changes I wanted to make.  By all rights, I should be sick of these stories, but in reading them I tried to imagine how other readers might see them.  In a way I was able to experience them with fresh eyes and gain some perspective on their strengths and weaknesses, as well as my own.

So this is it.  It's out of my hands now.  The next time I see my manuscript it will be a bonafide, honest-to-goodness published book.  In the meantime I am dividing my time between devising strategies for promoting the book and revising the novel I have been plugging away at lo these many years.  No matter how you see it -- calling, career or crap shoot -- a writer's work is never done.