Here are two questions I get from time to time, usually in tandem. Jen Carter is the latest to ask…
Have you ever had any jobs other than writing? And at what age did you decide that's what you wanted to do with your life?
Taking the last part first: As far back as I can recall — and I can recall pretty far back — I figured I'd wind up doing something like what I do for a living. Never wanted to be a fireman or a movie star or president or shortstop. Friends my age were always flitting from one dream to another, changing future careers more often than they changed their socks. My big indecisiveness was over what I'd write: Was it going to be comic books? Non-comic books? Cartoons? Magazine articles? Situation comedies? Screenplays? As it turned out, I've gotten to write all those things, often at the same time. Not only that, I've worked and continue to work with a lot of the specific characters and human beings who'd starred in those aspirations. In 1958, I was thinking how neat it would be to work with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera on Yogi Bear. In 1982, I was writing a Yogi Bear special for the studio, working with (and occasionally arguing with) Bill and Joe. I'm still processing a lot of time warps like that.
I guess I was around six or seven when I settled on my life's work…not that I couldn't or wouldn't have changed if some better alternative had presented itself. No viable option ever did and the following is not meant as a joke or faux humility. I really never found anything else I thought I could do. When they gave me those tests they gave kids then to determine the jobs for which you might have a smidgen of aptitude, I could just sit there and check them off: "Can't do that…can't do that…can't do that…" Tomorrow, if I had to make my living via manual labor or anything involving math or even serving the public directly, I'd wind up bunking with that homeless guy who sleeps behind the Jack-in-the-Box near me.
I've never believed that you can be anything if you put your mind to it. Maybe it works that way in your world…and if so, great. In my world, people have limitations and the trick is to recognize yours, eliminate the impossible and find something you like within what's left. When I speak to classes of wanna-be writers or actors, I always tell them the following; that the key to success in those areas is, I think, to locate that sweet spot between Idealism and Pragmatism. This is probably true to some extent in every field but those are the only two I know well enough to comment upon. I certainly have a nice cache of anecdotes about acquaintances who've failed, professionally and personally, because they were all Idealism and no Pragmatism or all Pragmatism and no Idealism.
Skip these last two paragraphs if you're the kind of person who gets annoyed to hear people say how happy they are with their lives. I feel quite fortunate that I somehow manuevered into the area where I felt least incompetent…and that I knew what that was, early on. I still run into guys from high school who are trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up and it's getting late in the day. They all have the problem my father had. He never found anything that he could do that he wanted to do, so he spent his life working a job he hated. I saw what that did to him and it was just plain unhealthy. He practically came home from the office every day with black lung disease. Ultimately, he had to derive most of his happiness in life from watching that not happen to his son.
I have occasionally made money as an editor, an artist, a letterer, a producer, a teacher, a voice director or even — gasp! — a performer. My work in most of those areas has been very limited because my competence in most of those areas is very limited. In any case, I consider all of those to be adjuncts to my life as a writer. So though it may not be technically accurate, I feel like the answer to the question "Have you ever had any other jobs than writing?" is no. In fact, I often don't even feel like I've ever had a job, period. Once in a while, there's a producer or editor or network exec who can make me feel that way but the feeling, like those associations, never lasts very long.