After graduation, Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, and saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan in 1982. His experiences traveling with the mujahideen formed the basis of his first non-fiction book An Afghanistan Picture Show, or, How I Saved the World which was published in 1987. Upon his return to the USA he briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley as a graduate student but dropped out after one year. He then worked as a computer programmer, despite having virtually no experience with computers. According to a New York Times Magazine profile by novelist Madison Smartt Bell, he spent the better part of a year there writing his first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels, after hours on office computers, subsisting on candy bars from vending machines and hiding from the janitorial staff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Vollmann

In the early 1960s, Coetzee relocated to London, where he worked for a time at IBM as a computer programmer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee