[madaxe_again]

I write, purely for my own pleasure, as as you say, it’s absolutely no way to make a living. I’ve hundreds of shorts, a few dozen novellas, and a couple of novels - with which I have precisely zero interest in doing anything. Writing them was the point.

This, unfortunately, has been the case practically for as long as literature has existed - very, very few authors make anything more than a pittance from their work in their lifetimes, and historically a majority of authors were the scions of wealthy or at least comfortably middle class families.

Now, thankfully, the publishing landscape is substantially more democratic, however the financial hurdles to being an author remain very real - it’s a side job, out of necessity, until you get published - and then it’s still probably a side job.

So, yes, it’s a labour of love. I don’t think anyone goes into writing to make bank, but rather because they have an insatiable urge to write, or to convey an idea, or whatever it may be - but financial success doesn’t weigh into it - in fact, for most, it’s an expensive hobby, insofar as it’s rather time consuming. Me, I just write whilst babysitting my telescope through the nights. Keeps the fingers warm.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Genre fiction like S/F has different rules. In S/F you're taught to write in a way that will get you published, and paid for your work. I posted this a couple weeks ago, it's a quote from an interview with Ted Chiang:

TC: I think the reaction varies, because science fiction is a more commercial genre. There are a lot more people in science fiction whose goal is to make a living from writing fiction by publishing one or more novels a year. And people who enter science fiction generally receive more messaging about fiction writing as a sole source of income than, say, people entering mainstream fiction. The messaging there is different: get an MFA, teach; it’s understood that your teaching position supports your career as a writer. For writers entering science fiction, that’s not really a thing yet. We’re maybe getting there, but the messaging they receive is mostly: Be very prolific.

https://culture.org/an-interview-with-ted-chiang/

So basically most people don't write S/F "just for fun", and I'm pretty sure that was never the case and all the greats and less-well-known greats of the genre were all professional writers.

[madaxe_again]

I’m not sure if that’s so, or if it’s selection bias at work - the SF&F writers you’ve heard of, whose stories actual and literary you know, are the ones who plugged away at it to make a living. What TC says is true - and it has been so for a long while. So many of the greats ground their way up through the pulps - I collected the back catalogue of Analog under its various guises as I found it rather fascinating to see authors develop chronologically — you can practically see them honing their formulae in real time.

I write SF&F for shits and giggles, as I don’t like the idea of writing things to be commercially successful, having spent much of my existence focussed on commercial success elsewhere. Rather, I write for the catharsis and the vicarious experience of crafting a world and a narrative. I don’t know that I’m alone in that, but then again, I don’t know that I’m not - but I can’t believe myself to be particularly unusual.