It's not really a mystery that many authors didn't just walk out of university and became best-selling millionaires. In between the long hours hunched over their keyboards or typewriters, chiseling away at their stories, they also had to earn a living some other way. A few of them were lucky enough to actually do something related to writing to keep the pot boiling, but others were not quite so fortunate. Octavia Butler famously worked as a potato chip inspector amongst other jobs when she wasn't writing science fiction at two in the morning.