Lee Allen Howard

I’m very happy to post this guest blog from the fabulous Lee Allen Howard!

Using Your Day Job in Your Writing

Very few fiction writers earn enough from their creative efforts to support themselves. I don’t—yet. So we have day jobs (or night jobs). Anthony Trollope, one of the most prolific English novelists of the Victorian era worked as a clerk at the General Post Office. Stephen King once labored in an industrial laundry and later taught school while he wrote.

I’ve got a day job, too. Since 1985 I’ve been a technical writer, primarily for the software industry. Although I’ve made a good living at it, writing user manuals and help systems ain’t the most exciting work, let me tell you. But my day job has:

• Taught me advanced use of writing and publishing tools
• Enabled me to work with huge amounts of text (one of my many user…