[ggm]

I have empathy but it's tempered by realism. Very few people make a sustaining income from writing, almost all of them supplement some other source of income or subsist.

Editing and proofing may be a better deal. My partner did this for over 25 years and rarely exceeded the taxable income threshold.

[ghaff]

The perhaps unsatisfactory answer is you land a day job with a company that has a significant writing component, e.g. various content marketing roles but other types of marketing as well or analyst work. It's not the "great American novel" but I was, to a large degree, essentially a professional writer for over 20 years. And latterly I definitely worked with a lot of people who would probably have preferred to be independent writers but found pleasure in having a fairly well-paid career with a company.

I do know some successful freelancers but they're the generally fairly well-known exception (and are presumably still not making the kind of money many on this board would consider great).

[Loughla]

Grant writing. I've done that for years. It's using your writing and analysis skills. Again, not the next great novel, but it does afford you the opportunity and income to write in your spare time, while doing a job that isn't too demanding.

[cafard]

Having done editing and proofing for a few years, I can say that it paid the rent and kept me fed, but didn't do much more than that.