I am convinced that writers may be the pedigreed mutts of America’s Artistic Kennel Club.

Stephen King was at one time a janitor. Kurt Vonnegut was a car salesman and managed America’s first SAAB dealership. William Burroughs was an exterminator. T.S. Eliot composed The Waste Land while working as a clerk at a bank in London. Margret Atwood worked as a cashier in a coffee shop. Charles Dickens worked in a factory, and Richard Wright, William Faulkner, and Charles Bukowski were all disgruntled postal workers. Langston Hughes was a busboy, Harper Lee sold tickets for Eastern Airlines, and Zane Grey was a dentist.

So many authors boast an entire menagerie of collected odd jobs. Douglas Adams worked as a hospital porter, barn builder, chicken shed-cleaner, hotel security guard, and a bodyguard. Jack Kerouac was a gas station attendant, cotton picker, night guard, railroad brakeman, dishwasher, construction worker and deckhand. Harlan Ellison claims to have been a tuna fisherman, crop picker, hired gun, nitroglycerin truck driver, short-order cook, cab driver, lithographer, and a door-to-door salesman. The list goes on… and I encourage any of you to spend an hour surfing the subject on the net as it is not only entertaining but will work wonders for your self-esteem.