The Writer's Call and Covenant

A writer, if he has anything of true value to communicate, will write not so much from an act of personal choice (though it is, certainly, a choice). He will write because he must, because he observes and honors a calling.

The writer's calling is nothing less than a covenant of the soul. This is not hyperbole or self-aggrandizement; it is a vital existential and cosmic truth. To ignore the calling or to refuse the charge that is placed upon the writer is simply at the point of true recognition an impossibility. The writer must write. He must find a way to communicate the vision and understanding of the life he has known, the insight earned and entrusted to him. For writing, as any vocation, is indeed a truth and a trust. Perhaps he will speak to the whole of humanity. Perhaps he will speak to an audience of few or of one. But if he is true to his vision and vocation, he will take up the mantle and write.

To write is not simply to exercise the crafting of words (however rhetorically or artistically practiced). Less so is it pure "self-expression." To write, as a writer, is to give truth to the voice and the vision of the soul. So it is with painting. So it is with music. So it is with dance. Writing is a matter of necessity. It is a creative act of acceptance and surrender. It is not conceived in the womb of contingency, governed by the tides of chance.

The recognition of the writer's call and covenant--this, and this alone, is the moment of the birth of the word. The rest is revision, a fine-tuning of the music first heard in the depths of the stillness of the soul.