A Writer’s Vocation

In plain English, a vocation is a calling, a way of life which people must follow in order to become their true selves. Heads of training-colleges in their speeches to students freely refer to teaching as a vocation; perhaps too freely. Joe Smith and Sally Brown may be working as teachers in the same school. Though Joe is by no means efficient, he knows obscurely that he has found a true vocation; the kids like him and he likes the kids; things are working out right for him at quite a deep level. Sally is a more efficient teacher, but somehow she is losing touch. She has the sense of being up against an invisible barrier; there is always a sense of strain in the classroom, and on Sally’s side a deep frustration. She decides, for no very serious reason, to apply for a job teaching subnormal children; and strangely enough it works out right for her. That is her actual vocation. But only she can judge it. The visiting inspector (if he thinks about it at all) may have decided that Sally is a good teacher and Joe a poor one.

A man may, at one and the same time, have several vocations. I am a writer by vocation; also a husband and a parent. I doubt if any of the twenty- odd jobs I have held down in the past fourteen years were in any true sense vocations. But writing and married life are undoubtedly two vocations whose demands I am obliged to fulfil in order to become myself, the man God intends me to be. A vocation may also be temporary. One vocation may lapse in favour of another, as when a nurse leaves nursing in order to become a nun or a married woman. The nun has a period of probation during which she can test whether her vocation is real or not; the married woman generally takes a gamble, depending on ‘love’ to pull her through, and perhaps that is one reason why so many marriages come to grief. But these are fairly obvious vocations, approved and understood by most of one’s fellows, and even by the potential artist himself. Therefore I intend to discuss briefly the meaning of a writer’s vocation and some of the ways in which it may be tested.

It is quite possible that one in every ten people who start writing in their teens or early twenties may have a true vocation to be a writer. God means them to find their true self by writing (as well as in other ways), and by smothering their gift they may lose the key to their own interior life. ‘That’s all very well. I had a few poems published in the varsity magazine, when I was your age, myself. But what are you going to do?’ An understandable reaction from the ordinary parent (or teacher, or pastor, or vocational guidance officer) when an adolescent explains that his or her main bent is ‘writing’. I remember how in my late teens my parents presented me with a tentative programmepage 352 for the future – with their generous support I was to obtain a New Zealand degree in English, go to Oxford or Cambridge, obtain an English degree, and then become a scholar and lecturer in English literature. It was by no means an unworthy programme; in fact, on most counts it seemed at the time that I was an ungrateful fool to reject this programme and go to work in an iron rolling mill. My motives, as I recall them, were mixed and doubtful; but some obscure voice at the back of my mind said: ‘You are not meant to be a scholar and a lecturer, Jimmy. You would shrivel up like an old, cold potato. You are meant to be someone else, someone else whom you have not yet become, and one of the ways you will find your true self is by writing.’

How very egocentric! Yet a man must look for his own good where he finds it; and if a saint gives him advice that goes against his own sense of vocation, he must say: ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m travelling by a different road.’ Of course, one of the striking characteristics of saints is their ability to help others to discover a true vocation. They love to see others exercising a free choice. But a great many good men and women, who are not yet saints, stand beside an adolescent and tug his sleeve, saying: ‘Use my wisdom. Use my prudence.’ This applies especially when the choice of the adolescent seems likely to endanger his or her chances of material success, or when the choices seem morally dangerous (as when a girl becomes attached to a man with many and obvious faults). To have a vocation as a writer is like holding to the stirrup-iron of a swift and lively horse. One may be pulled through the brambles and across stones; to the onlooker the choice will appear dangerous, or even utter folly. But the horse was bred in heavenly stables; and the vocation is a true one.

We do not readily recognise an artistic vocation. But if you think you are born to be a writer, then test it out, write screeds (it does not matter if a great deal of it is junk), think over it, quarrel about it, read the work of others. If your job is not suited for writing, then take another job. A job is not a vocation. And if you find eventually that you were mistaken, there is no need to get sour. Some have a vocation to teach; some to write poems; some to jive, drink beer, and laugh loudly and often; some (there are very few of these) to give other people advice. But all are pleasing to God in the degree that they become their true selves, the selves He holds in keeping for His and their eternal enjoyment.

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