Writers.

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again, we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the newspaper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our own book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid he is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said before, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more."

-Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

I've been the kind of writer Miller describes before, but I'm not her, now. I'm a writer with a chatty Muse, up at 5 AM thinking of the things I need to write each day. I'm a workhorse writer, writing as if my life depended on it...because it does. I write for my bread, my bath, my mortgage. I write for the paychecks that pay for me and pay for my man to live. We actually live pretty well, considering that I make my money by writing, and writers aren't paid so well.

It makes me laugh that Miller smells the book, then smells the book again. I smell books. I smell them and smell them. I also smell newspapers and magazines. I have the Kindle app on my iPhone, but it doesn't have a smell. It's kind of sad. I can read in the bed at night next to my husband while he's sleeping, though, without disturbing him, so that's nice. I do wish it had a smell.

I also am jealous that any other person ever wrote a book, or anything at all. Last week, someone told me that a columnist whose work I published is the "best writer" she'd ever read. I wanted to slap her in her mouth for daring to say such a thing in my presence. Doesn't she know who I am?

Many of my friends swoon over writers. I swoon, in theory, but I'd never fall in love with a writer, unless he was a vastly inferior writer. I'd hate it, a man getting his hands all in my words, or worse yet, having words of his own. It would be much worse than when a man comes in the kitchen and tells me the sauce is too salty or the chili to spicy - far worse. I might have to kill him. There is no room in my bedroom for another writer.

There was a boy in college with whom I had a brief tryst. He wrote well, but not very well. He wrote pastoral poems about his boyhood home. They were pleasant poems, kind of pastel and blurry and dreamy. He thought I was amazing and terrifying. I could see it in the way he looked at me.

I wonder which is worse: idolatry, or wanting to be an idol.