They say you should always write about what you know; and what you know is likely to be the day job that you have to give eight hours of your life to every day to get those bills paid.
For many authors, the jobs they had before becoming successful were more than just a way of bringing in money - sometimes, they also helped them by providing inspiration for the literary works they later produced, catapulting them to a life of fame and riches and escape from that old 9 to 5.
Job site Adzuna has created this excellent infographic to celebrate National Novel Writing Month, telling the stories of a host of authors and their previous day jobs - take a look below and find out a few tales of inspiration you never knew before.
