When I was ten years old so was the Great Depression. Bread was a nickel a loaf, a new house about $10,000, a great salary was $25.00 a week. So when I read that Mark Twain got ten cents--ten cents!--a word for his early writings, I counted the words in just the first two two chapters of Tom Sawyer and decided that writing was the way to go!
TG
PS: Been doing it ever since--sometimes still--for ten cent s a word.