I’ve never really believed in “callings”: That a person could know beyond a doubt not just what they should do with their life, but what they were meant to do with it. Or that anyone even IS “meant” to do anything. I do, however, believe in passion…and call me crazy, but between the self doubt and manuscript-tearing there are moments when I feel with lightning conviction that I have found the thing that is right for me in writing.
Sometimes it’s as I’m researching (I love learning, and writing books is a great excuse to keep expanding your world); sometimes it’s when I make myself, or others, laugh; sometimes it’s when I realize I have stopped looking at the clock or my word count because I am totally immersed in the work.
Recently it was because I wrote a whole chapter of my WIP in just a few hours and when I stepped back to figure out why, I saw how much fun I was having: the day’s work had involved researching a famous painter, brainstorming literary innuendo and coming up with and auditioning a series of woefully bad pickup lines. I’m talking, like, nose-pinchingly, squirrel-meltingly bad. I plan to scrap all but one of them, and I still haven’t decided which to use, but I sure had a blast coming up with them.
Do what you love, and the work is its own reward.
