There comes a time when a writer achieves something that says, “My writing is really worth something.” And that’s the first time we’re paid for something we wrote.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, was first paid for his work when his novel, A Princess of Mars, was published in the serial magazine All-Story. For the serialization rights, Burroughs was paid four-hundred dollars, quite a bit of money back in 1911, and an even bigger sum for a struggling husband with two kids to feed. Years later, with several successful science fiction, fantasy, romance, and western stories under his belt, Burroughs would claim it all paled to the feeling of accomplishment he felt when he recieved that check for $400.
Similarly, I was first paid for something I wrote in my senior year of high school, when I wrote a short story for a magazine called TEA, A Magazine. The short story I wrote, which I had geared towards this very magazine, was called Summers with Grandmother Fumika, and was about a young girl in Japan who hosts a tea ceremony for a fox spirit with her grandmother. The magazine paid me $100 for the story, and published it in their Winter 2011 edition, with a little illustration in one corner of the fox spirit to boot.
That $100 felt like a gold brick to me. And even though I haven’t gotten any paid pieces since, I think that no matter how successful my short stories or my novels may possibly become, I’ll be like Edgar Rice Burroughs, feeling the most pride for a small sum of money.
What about you? Have you ever been paid for your work?
What did it feel like?
Rami Ungar The Writer 
So far no…but hopefully soon! I think they say that once you get paid to do something, you become a “professional.” Still waiting!
Keep writing and keep hoping, someday you’ll get it.
And that’s an interesting definition of “professional”; I’ve always considered a professional as someone’s who’s paid or whose advice is sought just for what they do. I’m not there yet, but hopefully I’ll make it someday.