The custom of having a patron saint for a particular occupation is nowadays
viewed primarily as a Catholic tradition, but the idea actually predates
Christianity. Before there were saints there were gods and goddesses, and
no occupation lacked an appropriate deity to whom one might address one's
prayers. As an illustration of how far this went, it is documented in
ancient sources that Aradia, the daughter of Diana, was the patron goddess of
thieves and prostitutes.
Moving from robbers and hookers to writers and saints - a huge leap, one hopes - we come to St. Francis de Sales, the official patron saint of authors and journalists. Why him? According to Catholic Online, "He is patron saint of journalists because of the tracts and books he wrote." De Sales was quite the writer, but we think there are other reasons as well that particularly qualify him for the job.
Take, for example, his view toward his writing schedule: ""I have more than fifty letters to answer. If I tried to hurry over it all, I would be lost. So I intend neither to hurry nor to worry. This evening, I shall answer as many as I can. Tomorrow I shall do the same and so I shall go on until I have finished." Sound familiar?
But there's more. De Sales knew how to deal with rejection; really knew. Francis spent three years trudging through the countryside with his cousin, determined to convert Calvinists back to Catholicism. He slept in haylofts when available, elsewhere when not, and on one memorable occasion tied himself to a branch in a tree so that he would not: a) be killed by wolves, and; b) fall out of the tree. He was so frozen the next morning that he had to be cut down from the tree. At the end of three years, he'd made zero converts and his cousin deserted him. So he kept on. One hardly thinks him a man who would be deterred by the occasional rejection slip.
And then, of course, there's the self-publishing and promotional aspect. Since no one would listen to Francis, he wrote sermons, copied them by hand, and then slipped them under people's doors. By the time Francis headed back home, he'd made 40,000 converts by this method. A writer's writer, if you will. And certainly, for writers, a sympathetic saint.
Of interest:
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