This Business of Literature

Yesterday evening while reading and commenting on literary blogs, it struck me as somewhat odd that I was getting paid to read and write. What a profession! In today's Writer's Almanac, Tobias Wolff is quoted as saying: "There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. [If you become a writer] you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it."

Well, my pleasure is also my duty. I worked on a poem this morning, and I am blogging here right now out of pleasure and duty--and I am glad of it.