A Day In The Life Of A Writer

Life has us wear many different hats. Mom. Wife. Missionary. Teacher. Novelist. Those are some of mine from past and present, and your list might be even longer. All these hats define us to some degree, demand our time, and make us constantly question our allocation of resources. No wonder many of us spend years or decades nursing the question of “what am I supposed to achieve in life, and what should I let go of?”

Obviously, we have more than one calling in life. With all the passion and love I possess, I strive to follow Jesus and to be the best mom and wife I can be. These are my “obvious” callings, and you have your own. But what about our jobs, our hobbies, our church, our volunteer work, our interests? Which one should get how much attention?

I recently read this beautiful statement from author and theologian Frederick Buechner:

“Your vocation in life comes from where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.”

– Frederick Buechner

It’s every human’s deepest desire to find the place, the vocation, or the calling where what we love to do meets a deep need of humanity and fills us with satisfaction and gratitude.

I spent decades – basically the time since I was a young teenager – pondering this question. I intuitively knew that finding who I was meant to be would require something deeper than the aspirations of our society to acquire comfort, security or money.

I’ve always admired people who know exactly what they want. People who put a tremendous effort into something others find only mildly interesting. These people invest whatever it takes into their passion, because it’s part of their calling – a part of who they are.

It was around six years ago I finally started stepping into my own calling. It happened almost accidentally in form of my husband asking what I would do if I could do anything I’d want. After a short trip to paradise where I’d conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra (which is probably not going to happen) or be part of the Artemis lunar program (which is definitely not going to happen), I said I’d write a novel.

My wonderful American husband with his “you-can-do-whatever-is-in-your-heart” attitude said, well, then what’s keeping you from doing it? To which the ever-pragmatic Swiss had at least sixteen counterarguments, starting from “I didn’t go to university for this” (a Swiss favorite) to “I don’t know how to market anything” to “I feel like only successful and famous people do something like this”.

What I wasn’t concerned about was the actual work of writing. Writing I already loved. Seeing myself as a writer needed the help of my visionary husband.

The six years that followed revealed what “real life” often throws at us anyway: A rollercoaster. More first times than ever before in my life. Hard work. Little successes followed by grand failures, and sometimes the other way around. Lots of unknowns, and even more surprises. I definitely said, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done more than once, and I’ve birthed three kids without pain medication.

But in the middle of the challenges, I’m today also in the middle of what I’ve wanted to do all my life. My greatest joy meets an actual need in the world (the need of people to connect with God and others in authentic ways without denying their brokenness – and hear the story of others who’ve been there), and I get to be a small thread in the beautiful tapestry of love called the Kingdom of God.

What does that look like every day? Well, some days I do nothing even remotely related to writing, because I cart my kids around, get groceries, pay taxes, try to stay healthy and wonder why everything in life takes so much time. And it’s ok, because it’s all part of our calling to live.

But then there are days I get to truly immerse myself in my calling. It’s the days when…

6:10 am        I get the kids ready for school.

7 am             I attempt to work out at home, an attempt which usually lasts for an incredibly short amount of time.

7:15 am        I spend time quietly with God, the Bible and my own musings about the wonder of life and me being a part of it. This lasts a lot longer than the workout does.

8 am             I open my computer, working through the aspects of a life that has gotten more entangled with technology and online communications than what I’d choose – but I dare not lament it for fear of being labelled as a complete dinosaur by my teen and pre-teen kids.

9 am            I communicate with the team who is currently working on the German translation of my first novel A Broken Hallelujah, pondering the challenges of trying to say the exact same thing in two languages used by two very different cultures.   

9:15 am           I write an actual letter (yes, on paper!) to a fellow author who writes on a similar subject as I do, cheering her on and sharing what her books have meant in my life. I learned doing so only after writing my own book and realizing what a lifeline personal feedback is to an author. (Before becoming one myself, I just assumed authors were busy enough with writing and didn’t want to spend time reading letters from readers. I was Wrong – yes, with a capital W.)

9:45 am           I read the most recent posts in the Alliance of Independent Writers blog – a source of constant astonishment to me. The amount of work writers put into trying to promote their books still makes my head spin. Most of us are artists desperately trying to WRITE and finding ourselves doing a million other things instead, from obtaining copyrights, working through amazon sales reports and advertising platforms to checking out the newest writing software. The first year of being a part of this network I needed emotional support after each fifteen minutes of insights into a writer’s “real life”.

10 am              I get an email from Boyd, the producer and actor who is heading the production of my audiobook for A Broken Hallelujah. He sends me the voice of Justin, one of the novel’s main protagonists, narrated by a voice actor I have never met in person. Hearing him read the lines of one of my characters so dear to my heart is moving and strange at the same time. Another first time.

10:30 am         A young woman messages me who just finished reading my book. She was part of the same environment I – and the book’s main protagonists – were in. The hurt she has experienced from this environment goes much deeper than mine, and I’m reminded of the importance of telling this story and helping people remember that faith is the antidote to guilt and expectations, not its foundation. That God breaks the mold of everybody’s imagination, no matter how wide you think your horizon is. And that living with joy and lightheartedness is birthed out of this deeply rooted faith that is so worth discovering.

11 am              I discuss the developmental edit of the first eighteen chapters of my (as of now unnamed) second novel with Jacqueline, my editor in the UK. We discuss character arcs, plot twists, and a hundred other things I had no idea existed just a few years back. Being an editor has got to be almost as wonderful a job as being a writer.

11:30 am         My growling stomach tells me that no, mankind does not live by writing only, and I might have gotten by with skipping breakfast but lunch is not up for discussion.

12:15 pm         Believe it or not, I pour my espresso after lunch, I open my writing app and I actually start WRITING!

2 pm                Oh, the bliss! I got nearly two hours in, chapter 19 is well on its way, and as much as I love my kids and the afternoon I’m about to spend with them, I secretly fantasize about how much I would write if I was an island by myself. If nobody interrupted me between 2pm and 10pm? Unimaginable.

But then I go about the part of life that nourishes and sustains my calling – my family and my friends. I don’t want to be an island and can’t imagine any artist being one. The human “distractions” are part of what makes life beautiful and what fills my pages with authenticity and love. And with a little luck, I get to write some more tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

Almost as if it was a calling.