Small Victories

Almost all of the writers I know aren't in it for the money. Sure, they'd like to make money. They hope that someday they might make money. But they write for other reasons. Some can't stop writing. Others find it therapeutic or enjoyable. But if making money is the only reason we wrote, 99 percent of us would stop, because we just don't make that much, if anything at all.

So we write for other things, and I take every victory I can get. Sure, there is a warm fuzzy when I open the letter from my publisher and see that they are paying me for putting words down on paper. But there is a much bigger warm fuzzy when a boy comes in for an autograph, and his mom tells me that he insisted they drive clear across town so that he can meet me.

Or when I get a package full of mail from an elementary class.

Or like the time a complete stranger told me that his wife was expecting, and he wasn't sure he was ready for another child, but after reading my book he is reminded that it's all worth it.

So, I never expect to quit my day job, and it's a lot of work writing and working with a publisher, and at the end of the day, I've put a whole lot more money in other people's pockets, than my own. But if somebody has chuckled over something I wrote...then it's all good.