I thought this was interesting when I read this recently
posted article from Reuters. I thought I
would share most of this, so I copied it here.
I bet we’d all be surprised at the number of famous authors today who knew
as children they would be writers as adults.
Things were quite different in the
beginning. Maybe there’s hope for all of
us. Here’s the article.
(Reuters) - It
doesn't matter how famous, or how important or how rich the person is -
virtually everyone likes to stroll down memory lane and reminisce about their
first job, which was usually very menial and extremely low-paid.
Since last
August, to coincide with the nation's monthly employment report, Reuters has
been interviewing a host of prominent achievers on the subject. We have chatted with business titans, tech
visionaries and some of the world's leading humanitarians.
This month we tap
into the memories of notable authors, to discover the employment that preceded
their outstanding creative careers. They
are not, to put it mildly, the jobs you might expect.
Margaret Atwood
Author of: The
Handmaid's Tale; Oryx and Crake; MaddAddam
First Job: Market
researcher
“I had many jobs
as a teenager, as one did in the ‘50s, but they were intermittent. The first job for which I had a regular salary
and the offer of a pension plan was when I was 23, in 1963, as a questionnaire
re-writer and tester for a market research company in Toronto, querying user
response to everything from canned pear labels to beer brands to the first Pop
Tarts, which popped all over the experimental toasters and had to be fixed.
“The job was to
re-write the questionnaires so they actually worked (Understandable questions? Logical flow?) and then go door-to-door to
make sure they did. That got nosy me
into a lot of houses.
“Never waste
anything,” said my Depression-era parents, so I didn’t. The market research company (more or less) can
be found preserved in aspic in my first published novel, The Edible Woman
(1969).”
Matthew Quick
Author of: The
Silver Linings Playbook; The Good Luck of Right Now
First job: Roofer
“I tarred and
silver-coated industrial flat roofs. The
tar needed to be heated in a kettle, so I’d have to load huge solid chunks into
bubbling black lava. Little beads would
jump out like tics, burn my flesh and take up residence in my arm hair. We had to monitor the temperature so that the
kettle wouldn't explode, and breathing in the fumes all day was the equivalent
of smoking a half-dozen packs of unfiltered cigarettes in eight hours. I'd cough all night long.
“Painting the
roof silver was like working on a mirror under the powerful summer sun. My skin would burn so badly that the other
roofers took to calling me ‘Red Man.’ There was
one particularly cruel day when a radio reporter said the city of Philadelphia had pulled
all horses off the streets because of the heat-wave. Six stories closer to the sun, and with no
shade in sight, we all looked over at our foreman. ‘Back to work,’ he said.
“Every summer
during college I roofed. Despite being
filthy and sunburned on a daily basis, I enjoyed working outside amongst men
whose handshakes were firm and calloused and honest. I returned to roofing briefly after I
graduated and noticed a shift. Finally, one
of my fellow roofers said, ‘What the hell are you doing up here, College
Graduate? There’s better out there for
you. Go.’”
P.J. O'Rourke
Author of:
Parliament of Whores; Eat the Rich; The Baby Boom
First job:
Messenger
“In 1970 I was
under two mistaken impressions. I
thought I was a writer, and I thought I was a communist.
“My first job as
a writer didn’t involve any writing. I
was trying to break into the field so I went to work as a messenger for a
weekly newspaper in New York.
I was promised that I might have a
chance to occasionally write something if, for instance, the entire rest of the
staff came down with bubonic plague.
“The job,
therefore, taught me nothing about writing. The job did, however, teach me an important
lesson in political economy, a lesson that has been shaping the things I write
for more than 40 years.
“The pay was $75
a week. We were paid every two weeks. I was looking forward to that $150. And so was my landlord. But when I got my first paycheck I discovered
that, after federal tax, state tax, city tax, Social Security, health
insurance, pension contribution and union dues, I netted $86.50.
“I was furious.”
Susan Cain
Author of: Quiet:
The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
First Job: Law
associate
“My first big job
out of law school, I worked for a Wall Street law firm as an associate, and I
really didn’t know anything. I didn’t
even know the difference between a stock and a bond. Like, nothing.
“So it kind of
felt like a big adventure. I would talk
to clients, and I had a dictionary called Wall Street Words, and I would go
home every weekend and try to figure out what all the words they were saying
meant.
“I drew two
contrasting lessons from that job. The
first is that you can be reasonably good at anything, as long as you work hard
enough. The flip side is that you
shouldn't spend your life doing something you’re only reasonably good at. So after a few years I left that law firm,
because your job shouldn't feel like an existential struggle. You should spend your life doing something you
really love.”
