"Can you make a lot of money as a writer?"

the young man in the fifth row asked. I'm always asked.



They want to know, these aspiring writers, if they can make a living at this crazy word stuff, and so we talk about what "living" is, about commercial books and literary ones, about big advances and zero advances, about being one's own best advocate and looking ahead to new books. "You write your book, you advocate for your book, and then you keep creating," I tell them. "A writer's primary job," I reiterate, is to keep dreaming and creating."



But what's a royalty check? they want to know. And when you get them, do you celebrate?



This, my dear readers, is one literary writer's royalty check.  Not a whole lot, you say? But consider this: The book was written and the book was made. It contains a part of me, a stretch of days, that might otherwise have been forgotten.