I worked at comedy clubs - if I can use the term 'work' - for several years. I middled at one point. I never made it; I was never a headliner. I never made enough time to write enough good material, in my opinion.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've had menial jobs, and 'professional writer' isn't one of them.
I treat my writing like a day job, like my main job, even if for many years I was doing other jobs to pay the bills. I worked as a copy editor. I was a medical guinea pig. I was an eBay power seller of ladies' handbags. I was an assistant to a bookie at the horse races. I bartended. I did anything I could to make ends meet.
I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.
I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.
When I graduated college I needed to make money while I was pursuing acting, so I read screenplays and made a living writing coverage on them for studios.
Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life.
I taught workshops at universities. I wrote for magazines. This took time and insane amounts of juggling, but it's how I earned a living.
I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.
I've been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.
I probably worked every single entertainment medium, including some that don't exist. I worked the circus, carnival, I had my own medicine show, I worked 18 years of radio.