For many novelists, other work is a matter of economic necessity. They squeeze their writing around their day job, into crannies still tighter when they have a family or other commitments too. Some take on work in related fields; others, like Octavia Butler, choose the kind of jobs that fill their hours but not, they hope, their minds. Joanna Cannon’s first book, The Trouble With Goats and Sheep, was written in snatched moments in the car parks of hospitals where she worked as a psychiatrist. When it sold over 100,000 copies, and she secured a £300,000 contract, she became a full-time author, as so many writers dream of doing. Yet now she has said that she misses her patients and plans to return, albeit on a voluntary, part-time basis, bringing the arts into hospitals.

Some authors thrive in isolation. Others flourish in the world. Anthony Trollope produced more than 20 novels before resigning from the postal service, though it meant writing from 5.30am each day. Even those who have bitterly resented their jobs have sometimes profited from them. Think of William Golding, who wrote Lord of the Flies as a grumpy and rather unsatisfactory teacher at a boys’ school. In Franz Kafka’s books the sense of being trapped, and the bureaucratic entanglements, surely owe something to his loathed work as a clerk. The stress of Ms Cannon’s job drove her to writing in the first place, and she believes that authors need “to get out there and hear real voices”. She may now have found the best of both worlds, benefiting patients – and readers too.