Editing Theodore Sturgeon (section)

===Great Depression and the war years===
The young Sturgeon held a wide variety of jobs. As an adolescent, he wanted to be a circus [[acrobatics|acrobat]]; an episode of [[rheumatic fever]] prevented him from pursuing this. From 1935 (aged 17) to 1938, he was a sailor in the [[merchant marine]], and elements of that experience found their way into several stories. He sold [[refrigerator]]s door to door. He managed a hotel in [[Jamaica]] around 1940–1941, worked in several construction and infrastructure jobs (driving a bulldozer in [[Puerto Rico]], operating a [[filling station]] and truck lubrication center, work at a [[drydock]]) for the US Army in the early war years, and by 1944 was an advertising copywriter. In addition to freelance fiction and television writing, in New York City he opened his own literary agency<ref name="Agency">{{Cite book |title=Bright Segment |last=Sturgeon |first=Theodore |publisher=North Atlantic Books |year=2002 |isbn=1556433980 |editor-last=Williams |editor-first=Paul |pages=xiii |chapter=Foreword by William Tenn}}</ref> (which was eventually transferred to [[Scott Meredith]]), worked for ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]'' magazine and other Time Inc. properties on circulation, and edited various publications. 

Sturgeon initially had a somewhat irregular output, frequently suffering from [[writer's block]]. He sold his first story, "Heavy Insurance", in 1938 to the [[McClure Syndicate]], which bought much of his early work. It appeared in the ''Milwaukee Journal'' on July 16th. At first he wrote mainly short stories, primarily for genre magazines such as ''[[Astounding]]'' and ''[[Unknown magazine|Unknown]]'', but also for general-interest publications such as ''[[Argosy Magazine]]''. He used the [[pen name]] "E. Waldo Hunter" when two of his stories ran in the same issue of ''Astounding''. A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon".