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>After, and because of, my sister's last suicide attempt, the county found her a job painting details on trolley cars - road numbers in gilt, 'watch your step', borders, pinstriping, and so on. It would be a very cruel, woman-hating thing to say that it was the best place for her, given her talents, were it not, of course, true.
>In the car shed, surrounded by rough men who indulged her, she was a bohemian jewel in her paprika work coat spotted with paint, with her filter coffee and french cigarettes in a far corner, noodling away with her brushes. Dewy in the glow of a kerosene heater she took the greatest care with the smallest details. Her hands were busy and her mind increasingly clear. At times, she would cry, but never again all night, never to sleep.
>For the first quarter of her life, when she had sought to be a 'proper' working artist she was drowning, and every gallery, every buyer, every reviewer was a life ring which she could not catch, or if caught could not hold. Now as, you might say, a craftswoman she was breathing seawater, the cause was lost but the agony over. The pretensions were gone, and the little portraits and ornaments she made in the margins of books, on bits of card, and on the backs of her hands were no longer stillborn art, but lovely little tricks - "Oh, how clever, I didn't know you could do that." Her gift (and it was a gift) was not to be compared with the work of the professionals, but against the commonplace inability to paint at all, and by this standard, she shone.
So, what is the literary equivalent of painting trolley cars? I imagine it used to be being a journalist or copywriter, but the pseuds have taken over those fields. Technical writing maybe?