A career or a calling

I promise not to bore you with the definition of a career. It’s a no-brainer. But a calling is predominantly a church lingo really. Or so I thought until I enroll for my first screenwriting course in 2005. Murtala Sule was the screenwriting tutor, a muslim and a no-nonsense scholar. On the first day at school, he gave a memorable and heartfelt speech. He said, “as a screenwriter, you’re a self-appointed prophet…”

I can’t remember the rest now since it wasn’t taped. But I remember getting home to tell my friend ‘that this is where I should have been some seven years ago’. It was an epiphany of life-changing proportion. Even though I will not like to decorate myself with a prophet title, I know I am called to be a prophet. It’s just that my pew is my pen and paper. It’s screenplay.

So for me screenwriting is a calling. But it’s okay if for you it’s just a career. It took me a while to get there myself. The journey is usually in four stages.

Stage 1: Hobby _ You love to write poems, articles and letters.

Stage 2: Career _ You earn a living as a copywriter, a journalist or a screenwriter.

Stage 3: Calling _ You start writing specific themes in your screenplays.

Stage 4: Crusade _ You begin to enlist others to write screenplays.

Most people stay on one stage for a life time while few people make that transition from one stage to the next.