Your Resume: The Perfect Background for Fiction

I’ve worked a lot of jobs. 
Some of them were okay, others sucked ass. But they’ve all helped my
writing. Each one of these jobs has inspired characters, situations, and in one
case, an entire plot. I thought it might be fun to go through my resume and detail
just what sort of inspiration each job provided. Now, I didn’t include every
job, because even I have some pride. I’d rather a couple of them just fall into
oblivion where I can forget about them. Also, it’d be a really long post. So
here are the main jobs that left me something useful. You might be inspired to
go pick up a shitty job for your next book. Or not.




Probably not.




Waitress




Anyway, the first “real” job I ever had was waitressing. I
worked in this tiny little restaurant that was open 24 hours. Oh how I miss
scraping chicken wings and poutine from the ceiling. Those drunk assholes were
so much fun. We had one guy who asked for a muff burger every day. Every. Day.
No, he didn’t get the memo on the expiration date on such humor.




Waitressing is a well of inspiration for dialogue. The
dining room in this restaurant had about 15 tables at the most, with only
enough room for the waitress to walk through between each, so I heard
everything that was said in there. EVERYTHING. 
Man, there are things you just can’t unhear.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the
process of figuring out which customer was talking based on dialect, accent and
tone was extremely useful in writing so that the reader could do the same.
Also, should any of my characters have to clean dried food from a ceiling, or unclog
a toilet backed up by a bag of pot, a tampon, underwear, or worse, I can write
the shit out of those situations. For the record, I worked in a few tiny
restaurants. None were as colorful as Victoria Place, though. (Yes, I can
totally name names. It’s now a Chinese restaurant.)




Cheese Factory:
Production




Possibly one of the worst jobs I’ve ever worked was the
cheese factory. Snotty floors, freezing rooms where we tried to figure out how
to apply labels with gloves on, and the dynamics of a very weird hierarchy of
authority, inspired a few characters and taught me how to create tension via
relationships. In between the bagging and sealing of cheese products, I absorbed
the tension in that hotbed of gossip and back-biting. I also honed my sense of
humor. You can only stand at a machine doing a single motion for so many hours
before your brain checks out and insanity checks in. I go to that place when I
need funny.

Convenience Store:
Cashier




I used my years wasted checking items in a shit hole
convenience store in a couple of stories, mainly “Dirty Truths.” It was mostly
an atmospheric thing, but I also derived a few characters from my customer
base. You can find brilliant “extras” at such jobs. While I wasn’t doing any
writing at the time, I used to observe the customers and make up stories for
each to pass the time. If any of you out there recall me checking your shit at
said store, don’t ask what I made up for you. It’s better left a mystery.

Gas Station Attendant




This job was awful. First it was stinky. Second, I didn’t
know a dipstick from my own ass. Checking someone’s oil? Cleaning a windshield?
Topping up antifreeze and transmission fluid? Pfft. What a joke. While I
eventually learned how to do all that was required of a gas station attendant,
I first learned the art of bullshitting. Invaluable to a writer.

 

Bar: Server/Bartender




I miss bartending. Seriously. It was a really fun job. Sure,
drunks are assholes and your feet are beyond aching by the end of the night,
but I had a blast. Mostly. You see, when I worked at the bar, I was a single
mom, recently separated from my husband of only one year. The people I worked
with were awesome people, but the folks around town—not so much. A situation
like that screams for gossip. And gossip they did. Let’s see, the first rumor was
that my ex beat me within an inch of my life and that’s why I left him. Not
true. He was just an idiot and we should never have gotten married. The second
rumor was that the “boss” was messing around on his wife—with me. And he was a
badass hit man running drugs, liquor and weapons for bikers, and his wife was a
horrible bitch who only stayed married to him because she hated him and wanted
to make his life miserable. Not true. First, the wife is a beautiful person
inside and out, and a friend you want in your corner no matter what. Second, I
wish my life at the time had been half that interesting. And last, as far as I
know, there was no hitting of men or running of anything by anyone, for anyone.
But wouldn’t the lies make a fantastic book?




I ended up quitting this job because of the gossip. Hey, I
had a daughter and I was on my own. I also had my poor parents to think about (My
dad was one rumor away from homicide) and I wasn’t the same badass you see before
you today. I was a kinder, gentler soul back then. I couldn’t handle people
thinking things like that about me.

What I didn’t know (but learned real fast) was that when one
lives in a small town, the more you deny something, the more true people think
it is. It doesn’t matter if you can prove otherwise, your repeated denial makes
their gossip VALID. And it’s worse if elements of the rumors have some truth to
them, because it gives the gossip the flavor of authenticity, which is all a
small mind needs to keep going. There was a single grain of truth in that
entire web of lies: I left my husband. That was enough.




What did this do for my writing? Two words: Dirty Truths.
You’ll see.

Lumber Yard: Jill of
all trades.




I began working in a lumber yard as a cashier. Well, it was
a home improvement store/lumber yard/storage facility. I worked my way from the
cash to inventory. Then I went “upstairs” where I worked in an administrative
position. By the time I left there (an interesting story for later) I did all
of those jobs. I liked this place, mostly. What did it do for my writing? It
made me realize that every relationship is more complicated than it seems and
motivation is rarely a single, clear element. It also gave me awesome
characters. “In the Bones” has several characters inspired by my time at the
lumber yard and a few scenes in it (Audrey owns a Home Hardware and Ryan fixes up
an old farmhouse.) are plucked from my own experience.

Drive-Thru Diva




Oh. My. God. That’s all. No seriously…okay fine. I worked a
couple of years at the local Tim Horton’s. It’s a great bunch of people over
all, and I do miss the energy of the place sometimes, not to mention the fresh
from the oven sour cream glazed donuts…drool. However, you don’t know shit and
abuse until you’ve worked a drive-thru window. You have no concept of the
assholery out there until you’ve served coffee to Mr. Fucktard at 6 am. This is
where I pull many of my jackass characters from.

Daycare




Kids are an endless source of humor and patience. With
writing, you need both. It is during this time that I dove into writing “seriously”
and realized I could possibly do this shit. If not for the daycare, I don’t
know that I’d have worked up the guts to try my hand at “real” writing. Kids are
very inspirational, when they’re not wiping shit and boogers on the wall or
ripping your house apart. Also, some of my dialogue was stolen (verbatim) from
these kids. Brilliant, I tell you.

Freelancing




For a short time I freelanced for a local paper. Now I write
entirely for online clients, but the time with the paper taught me things I
didn’t know about small town dynamics and politics. I used all of that experience
when writing “In the Bones” and some of it in “The Legend of Jackson Murphy.”
It was through this job that I learned what made good atmosphere, conflict and
tension. It also cemented my long-time belief that I should never get involved
in politics. There would be bodies. Many bodies.

In addition to the creative stuff, freelancing honed my
basic writing skills as well. Copy editors have no qualms about ripping you a
new one. It still happens and I’ve been doing this for almost four years. You
can never edit something too many times.




So, there you go. There’s a bit of every job or it’s “people”
flavoring everything I write. In a way, my resume and this town play a huge
part in the voice behind my novels. I wouldn’t be who I am without these
experiences and these people, right? Hey, Tweed, you done good…I think.

What about you guys? Which jobs served you well in your writing? Were any a complete waste of time? And for my amusement, what's the worst job you've ever done?