Called to Write - Sulo Moorthy

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.

 C.S.Lewis, we have come to know and 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 might 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 in 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 want to quit writing. But I don't. The following should give you a clue.

Once 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 said to myself and tried to push the thought away. But the nudging kept on going.

 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 started thanking me for writing the article and telling me how it had helped her to better understand the Lord's Prayer. I had no idea how she obtained my phone number,  but we spent at least a half an hour talking on the phone that morning. Her phone call surely affirmed me that when I'm called to write, I've to trust and obey.

I could point to the above reason as something that made a significant change in my writing life and keep me going.