I have been lucky. I have been able to make my love words part of how I make my living. My ability to use programs like InDesign and to remove paper jams from deep in the printer have probably been equally important, but let’s not harsh my vibe.

One of my nieces wants to be writer. She’s interning at a magazine right now. While I could write a lot about the problem with internships (not only are most internships in flagrant violation of U.S. labor laws [if the internship is unpaid and the intern is doing actual work, that’s wage theft and it’s illegal], as well as creating a economic caste system that disproportionately benefits young people whose parents can afford to underwrite almost all their child’s living expenses during the term of the internship), I actually started thinking about here when I read this quote from Eileen Myles, who is an amazing poet, as well as a cultural commentator:

I do think it’s possible to make a living doing my writing but you have to be willing to live badly which I frequently do. There’s lots of blogs to write for instance and oddly even if they “pay” you you have to wait longer than ever before. While everything’s electronic pay checks are moving slower than ever before. You could blame the post office but I blame politics for that too. Increasingly though the belief is that you must be an academic or a publishing heavy if you are writing about books and you are obviously making your income elsewhere or else you are new or young or wealthy already and are just now climbing into prominence and need the “exposure.” So there’s less respect than ever for the idea that a writer or even a aloud reader of her work needs to get paid. There’s much shame about $ and that during an economic downturn. I find this trend to be deeply immoral. So the desire to make a living as a writer is a true perversion in this culture but I think we need our perverts more than ever…

…So you need a lot of courage and imagination and stupidity — and trust — that since the culture needs you it will support you. It must. It’s a crazy notion but I think it’s true and we make it true by acting on it. To be a working writer is a political act.

Look beneath the surface, and it’s not an optimistic take. Beneath the faith that society will learn to value its writers, it’s not a long dig below the permafrost to find the fear that society will not.

How many ways will remain for my niece and which things she carries will she have to sacrifice to achieve even Myles’ hard life?