There Are No Saints Here

A “tough love” open letter to a disgruntled wannabe

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

I’m sorry that you’ve been sold a pack of lies. It’s not the lies you think you bought, though. To say that I “never started writing for the money” means that I started writing in fifth grade. I sat by the lakeside, on the trunk of a fallen tree, with a notebook on my lap, a pen in my right hand, and my dog leashed on my left wrist. She patiently watched the birds glide and swoop above the still water as I poured my heart out in an essay that was due in a day or two.

Tired Of Some Saint Writers!

I didn’t write for money. I wrote for the grade.

I didn’t know, then, how much I would come to love the editor’s red pen, the occasional reader’s comment — because it was never about money. The money came later, of course. If it hadn’t, I would have done — did do — other things. I taught English as a second language. I served Tex-Mex and margaritas and dodged handsy customers who tried to grab more than the chips and salsa as I walked away. I operated machinery that stripped the pinfeed holes from giant stacks of paper and carbon from between the sheets. That was about the…