Reading author bios in the big SFF magazines, I'm always struck by how many of them are engineers and data scientists who went to expensive writing workshops. We should be publishing more stories by call centre workers and bartenders and guys who work in the beer bottling factory.

Writing worshops seems to be a very American thing, but I noticed the same tendancies to have a lot of engineers who writes books and short stories in France.

Drove pizzas. Worked in a warehouse. Picked corn. Toured in rock bands, often making as much as $30 a day!

In case anyone was wondering whether science fiction short stories are a hobby or a profession, to reach the US median family income by selling at SFWA's minimum pro rate, you'd have to sell 932,250 words of fiction this year.

I sold 2 stories when I worked unloading cargo containers. Then one more at as I worked at a door factory, gluing glass into frames.

I would subscribe to a magazine that did this SO fast.

Call Centre workers. Dear god, imagine the horrors to come from them. Would definitely buy.

Reposting myself, but bsky.app/profile/dash...

Healthcare workers. I mean, David Marusek worked in graphic design, but after reading Getting To Know You I would've hired him on the spot as a hospice caretaker.

im not a call centre worker now but did write a little interactive story about my find there and man i want to read more call centre fiction. but it totally killed me and i couldn’t write while working there, had to do it after i quit