but that has nothing to do, actually, with my writing. Or with my books. I get little royalties from those, something like a dollar for every book I sell. I’m not going to live on that. I do readings around, and maybe there is a thousand dollars in that, but I’m not going to live on it. So, it’s not a viable living. And, you know, to say career in terms of poetry is an oxymoron. I don’t know that I ever did come to a place where I said, “Oh, this is what I want to do.” I was just doing it. And then I had to decide whether I would keep doing it just on the side, or do I want to put more energy into it, and let go of other things to do this more. After I had my daughter, I thought, I really want to do something that is something she can look at and see that I’m doing something I enjoy in my life. I want to be a role model for her, and I thought, “What do I do, that I love? I write. So I should go to school, and learn more about writing, maybe get a job, somehow, being a writer.” Although, the job I thought I would get would be an editor, a journalist, something practical. I was thinking very practical, because I was a waitress all my life. This for me would be a step up. EW: I spent a long time doing that. DL: So, I started going to school. But it was just a community college class. I wasn’t going to school school. And then that led to another one and another, and finally I said, “Well, maybe I should just go to school.” Even then, all I did was get my BA in English with a creative writing emphasis. I didn’t go to an MFA program, because they were just starting. There weren’t that many, maybe five. When I found out about them after getting the BA, I wanted to get an MFA, but I had a twelve-year-old daughter, and I thought, “Well, I’ll wait until she’s out of school.” Because I’d already spent a year-and-a-half getting my BA, and I was already not helping her with her homework as much as I should be. So I was looking forward to when she turned eighteen. Instead what I did was write a couple books in the meantime. Not even knowing that’s what I was doing. I was writing poems, and when I got enough of them, I thought, “Well, it’s a manuscript, so I should send it out.” I ended up getting a book published, and getting a job based on my second book coming out. So I never got back to school. But that was pretty lucky, and a very different time. Now, it takes a lot more to get into teaching than when I was starting out. EW: Right. Even with an MFA, it’s very difficult. DL: By now, I’d have to be getting a PhD.
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