Q: Most writers have had other jobs. What’s one thing you learned in an entirely different professional setting that you’re grateful for?
-from Susan
1. Waitress. I can’t do it and will always have the greatest respect for people who can remember who ordered what, when they ordered it, and how to get it to them without putting my thumb on the portion of the plate their food is on.
2. Shelver in academic library: There is at least one book written on every subject and sub-subject, and tiny sub-sub-subject I can imagine. It was enough to scare me away from grad school and the need to find some tiny, tiny sub-subject I could come up with on my own.
3. Store detective (yes, me, for a blessedly short time): If you have a nasty, racist boss, you have a duty to show him how wrong he is by bringing in every weepy, white teenage girl who has stuffed a pair of cheap earrings in her bag.
4. Freelance writer: I could work 60 hours a week for 45 weeks a year and after taxes make only $8,000. This is not a career for someone who needs her own income and had to pay for childcare.
5. Non-profit executive: The number of entitled employees who had imaginative and fiercely held beliefs about that they were owed in the way of accommodations was always one more than I could deal with at any time.
6. Mystery writer: The best, most fun, least remunerative job in the world. Who knew back when the first novel was rolling around in my brain? This, at least, I'm grateful for. The rest? I'm grateful I have had the good fortune to learn and then move on.
I had no idea you'd been a private detective, Susan! Cx
ReplyDeleteCatriona, My integrity got in the way. It paid double what a salesperson would get, so I tried it. I wanted to have some money of my own in the early days of my marriage. Fodder for characters so much later in life!
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