Hey guys, here’s an article called, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” that I wrote for Poets & Writers Magazine. It’s about being tri-sexual: an editor, agent, and writer. I can’t tell if it’s true or wearing rosy glasses. It’s too breezy for me. Do I love what I do? Do I love my writers? Am I a happy Good ‘n Plenty dancing around in a pink box? What do I prefer: editing, agenting or writing? What do I prefer a cheese burger deluxe, a pizza half meatballs, or a bucket of anything? Do I like espadrilles or maryjanes? Have I learned from my mistakes?
Do you have a calling?
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Betsy Lerner 
“Do you have a calling?”
Yes.
I don’t get called, I get pulled. Now, as an adult, I hide out a lot, with my quill.
A passion, a need, a calling, it’s a disorder.
A well crafted sentence is like many decades ago sex with Danny – satisfaction, with reality as a chaser.
This piece, IMO, was reminiscent of The Forest for the Trees. I snickered at “pile of jelly known as your client.” So true. This pile of jelly has basically learned to buck up on her own.
I don’t think it’s breezy. It’s perfect, just the thing writers love to read about, the inside scoop on what’s going on. The part about the editor known as The Bermuda Triangle – again a teensy snort on that one.
“Do you have a calling?” For years (decades) I worked in high tech. For me, this was like getting up every morning and placing myself on a very high ledge. I was always afraid of falling (failing). The pressure sometimes was unbelievable. This writing thing is a calling because through conference calls, endless projects, spreadsheets, reorganizations, all of it, it’s all I thought about. Now I’m here. Writing. I feel different, knowing even if I fail, I can try again, and it’s on no one but me. I love it.
Well, it’s clear you love what you do; I especially liked your colorful descriptions of Boston during the changing seasons. Those who have a true calling make the world a better place by what they do and you’ve accomplished that on numerous levels. It’s been said here many times and I’ll say it again: Thank you, Betsy.
My calling is to be a good father. There are many good writers out there, but the world needs more good parents. Sometimes it’s a struggle (and I’m not looking forward to the upcoming teenage years — I built a balcony onto my daughters room five or six years ago, what the hell was I thinking?) My mother was a great parent and part of what hurt her so much after my father split was not understanding how her husband could abandon his children. I think he might be still searching for his calling.
This one hurts. For me, it’s the ulitmate slap-in-the face Oprah-esque question: what’s my purpose? Been thinking about it a lot lately. Not true. For a long while.
I once was a poet. (Didn’t you just love Lin-Miranda’s sonnet?)
I write magazine feature stories, and have won numerous awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists. Sporadic, and they don’t pay much.
I have a 3/4 semi-finished non-fiction book about a fascinating medical malpractice case with – get this – a judge that should have recused herself and jury misconduct, begging me to rescue it from the shelf, which I occasionally do in a half-assed way. I wrote a book 20 years ago on a transgendered individual tracing her intimate transition as he-to-she transgendered, today so relevant, so mainstream, really so ahead of its time: closeted. I can barely type but it doesn’t matter cause it takes me eons of unchartered time to compose a sentence, which I love doing, just getting lost in the fray of words.
Does a calling garner a legacy? What’s my legacy, then? Do I have one? Thank you, Mike, for your comments on parenting.They fill me up, because I have raised three wonderful kids, decent people, good citizens, complex though they are. And parenting never-ever has a finish line. And love and love and love and love and love.
Betsy, I adored The Bridge Ladies, enjoyed your newest article (and the one about Las Vegas!), and I, too, worship similes.
Well…not worship, that’s a little extreme, but delight in…
Words. I write them, edit them, help students learn how to wrangle them, grade them, shape them into sonnets and villanelles (OK, actually it’s sonnets and villanelle; that shit is hard), and then at the end of the day, I read them for relaxation. I’m fucked.