Many people think writing is a ticket to poverty. So did these five famous authors. They held "serious" jobs for years before starting their literary career. There's still hope for every aspiring author.
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5 famous writers you probably didn't know had unrelated jobs for years
Many people think writing is a ticket to poverty. So did these five famous authors. They held "serious" jobs for years before starting their literary career. There's still hope for every aspiring author.
Image: ullstein bild
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For this French author, writing wasn't really much more than a hobby. The professional pilot wrote his stories while waiting for the next flight. Following the worldwide success of "The Little Prince," he became a national hero. With more than 140 million copies sold, it remains one of the world's most popular books. An asteroid was even named after Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1998.
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Franz Kafka
Study something practical or a subject you love? Facing the old dilemma, Franz Kafka opted for security. After his law studies, he accepted a job as an insurance agent. At night, he worked on his novels and stories that would later become world classics. Kafka himself never experienced his huge literary success, as his works were only published posthumously - and against his will.
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Jussi Adler-Olsen
After studying medicine, sociology, political science and film, Jussi Adler-Olsen worked in many different jobs before starting to write at the age of 45. For a long time, he suspected that he'd be good at it, and yet, he didn't dare to try. His stories on Danish chief inspector Carl Morck are selling by the millions, and are read in a total of 125 countries.
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Rosamunde Pilcher
She is seen as a master of romance novels. But the British writer had her breakthrough at the age of 60. Before that, she was a housewife and a secretary; she went to Sri Lanka with the Royal Navy while writing some romantic stories for women's magazines. Finally, the British writer, now 91, wrote dozens of novels and stories, and a great number of them were adapted into film.
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Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll invented his famous story "Alice in Wonderland" to entertain the daughter of a good friend who was bored during a boat ride. The real Alice was fascinated by it, and so was the rest of the world later on. Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was really a math teacher who, despite his successful novels, remained devoted to the world of numbers until his death.
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He is one of the most internationally recognized French authors: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His works were sold by the millions. His best-known book ,"The Little Prince," was translated in over 180 languages.
Yet his true passion wasn't even writing, but flying. That passion never left him throughout his life. In the end, it killed him.
The passion of flying
Already at the age of 12, the young Antoine was sitting in a plane during his summer vacations. He faked papers declaring his mother's permission, and coaxed the pilot of a nearby airport into taking him along on his plane. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was totally fascinated.
His school grades were however too bad too allow him to become a pilot. Instead, he had to content himself with being trained as an airplane mechanic, while enviously watching others fly. But Antoine didn't give up so easily. He saved as much as he could from his modest earnings, took private flight lessons and finally managed to become a professional pilot. He ended up taking paying tourists on a 15-minute roundtrip above Paris, or in freight planes through Africa.
Inspiration: crash landing
Waiting for the next flight was an integral part of his job. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry made use of this spare time by writing novels - usually about flying.
"The Little Prince" was inspired by the pilot's crash landing in the Egyptian desert in 1935. He had to walk through the desert for five days before being rescued by a caravan.
Flying also cost him his life. In 1944, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, during a military reconnaissance flight, crashed near Marseille into the Mediterranean after the plane had been hit by a German fighter pilot.
On the 100th anniversary of the French writer, the airport of Lyon was renamed after him.
