[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.