Newspaper reports of publishers in bidding wars over whizzkid manuscripts have resulted in a skewed idea of what life is like for your average novelist Down at my end of the business  ie not exactly topping the bestseller lists  there are two ways of making ends meet The wisest among us write in the evenings and have other fulltime jobs that will still be there even if the book doesnt immediately get snapped up and turned into a film Those such as myself however are literary oddjobbers subsisting on a bit of teaching the occasional workshop and articles like this I have heard tell of an inhouse writing opportunity offered by a chocolate factory but Ive never managed to get anything like that Somehow though by dint of juggling parttime jobs and credit cards and also more often than not thanks to the generosity of those names you find in Acknowledgements the novel gets written