Writing: Tougher Than Installing Fences, Plumbing, And Building Roads

John Grisham wrote an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times about the jobs he had before he was a writer.

The author of “A Time To Kill” got his first paid work in his “early teens” watering rosebushes for a dollar an hour but was quickly promoted to fence-layer for fifty cents more. “There was no future in this, and I shall never mention it again in writing,” says Grisham. At sixteen, he became a plumber’s assistant.