Writer’s Desk: Getting Paid

There are many satisfactions in the writing life; though they all come with caveats. Setting your own hours—unless you’re on deadline. Being your own boss—unless you have to work closely with a narrow-minded editor. And so on.

But one of the truest joys that comes with being a writer is when you start to think that you can actually make a living at putting words onto paper.

Longtime New Yorker scribeE.B. White recalled that moment of realization forThe Paris Review:

I was twenty-seven or twen...