When I was in grade school, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. My dream was to make a living at it, but that never panned out. Actually, fairly early I realized that making it a career didn’t matter. The writing mattered.

I was attending a writer’s conference and taking one of the seminars. I’m not sure of the topic— Writing Short Stories, I think— but I remember the instructor, who was a writer I had met before. Because she knew me, she asked me a general question first that she then posed to several other attendees. “Give me three reasons why you write.”

My answers:

“It’s how I communicate.” (I was always shy and didn’t talk much— of course, now things are very different!)

“There are stories I want to tell.”

“I like to read.”

Decent answers, I guess. But then, other people in the seminar, maybe five or six of them, gave their answers. Many gave similar answers, but each and every one said the one thing that I didn’t. “I write because I want to make money.”

I remember thinking then, boy these people are money hungry.

But as I look back, maybe they were right. Maybe, if my focus had been on doing whatever it took to make a living at writing, I would have been more successful.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I gave up on the prospect of making at living solely by my writing, but I haven’t stopped writing, or publishing. Does that make me a failure? A success? I don’t know.