C.S.Lewis once wanted to become a great poet. A ruling passion to achieve acclaim as a poet controlled him at one time.But after he came to Christ, another passion,his passion for Christ, must have over-ruled his earlier desire, because in one of his letters he openly admitted that his frantic desire to succeed as a great poet became almost an idol to him that God had to put an end to it.
The C.S.Lewis, whom we have come to love through his writings is well known internationally for his prose writing rather than for his poetry. If the author had clung to his dream of becoming a poet and not yielded to God's guiding, the world may have lost the chance to enjoy the reading of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity.
I chuckle at the thought that even I once wanted to become a great writer. The truth is, until I turned 50, I had no idea what the word freelance writer truly meant. Creative cooking was my passion, not creative writing. Tired of being the guinea pig for my recipes, my husband decided to divert my attention by asking me to write a cookbook. His suggestion sounded splendid in my ears, but what did I know about writing a cookbook?
Luckily, I came across a writers' correspondence course in a magazine, and decided to enroll with the hope of writing my cookbook. But by the time I finished my course, I had completely forgotten about writing a cookbook; Instead,I started to write inspirational articles and devotionals for Christian market. It's amazing how God's leading takes us to places where we would have never thought of going. I never intended to become a writer. But, here, I am pounding the keys and writing stories or posting blogs. There are days when I want to just quit writing. But I don't, because I know I'm called to write.
I remember a time in the early days of my writing life,when I got frustrated over a my story writing and spending the night tossing and turning in bed ,wondering , whether to quit writing or not, I came down the stairs the next morning in a sulky mood. As I entered the kitchen, I saw something bright and red flashing from the window sill. Smiling atop the potted hibiscus plant on the sill were three freshly blossomed , jumbo-sized flowers. Ever since I noticed the buds on the plant, I was waiting for them to bloom. But they didn't until that very morning. Perfectly timed, they had blossomed on the day I desperately needed some uplifting of spirit.
It was as if God was trying to cheer me up with the bouquet of flowers. I felt as if God was telling me, if you could tend a dying plant and nurture it to grow and blossom, you could definitely tend to your writing and make it flourish it too. Not wanting to forget His message, I quickly grabbed my camera and took a snapshot of the plant. Whenever writing becomes a battle and quitting seems an easy option, the photograph on my desk enables me to keep going.
Another time, I was going through my old journals, when I came across something I had written some years back. It was the Lord’s Prayer I had written for my own understanding. I didn’t intend to share it with anyone or ever thought of submitting to any publication. But something within me nudged me to submit it for publication. I quickly discarded the idea, thinking that no publisher would ever want to publish something written by a lay person like me on the Lord's Prayer. There's no way I'm going to send it to any publisher, I thought and tried to get away from the thought. But the nudging went on.
Finally I gave in, and submitted&the article to the Edmonton Journal with the least expectation of getting an acceptance. I was living in Saskatoon at that time and I had no way of checking whether my article was published or not unless I went to the local library to get the Edmonton Journal. But I didn't bother to do that. Three Sundays later I received a phone call from a woman asking me whether I was the person who wrote the article, Let's pray with a clear understanding in the Edmonton Journal. When I said yes, she thanked me for writing the article and told me how it had helped her to better understand the Prayer. I had no idea how she obtained my phone number, but we spent at least half an hour talking on the phone that morning.
If I want to answer Brenda’s question, “One change that transformed my writing life,” I’d point to the above two reasons that keep me going still.
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