But this patchwork of low paid freelance work is the most reasonable way to make it sustainable for most people.

Yes. And, if this is your craft, this is how to flex. If you're driven to write, you're going to write, rich or not.

There's another piece of journalistic writing about erotic Potter fanfic where the article author realises they're possibly good at it and have recruited followers. It's https://www.vice.com/en/article/my-quest-to-become-a-harry-p...

This is a negative comment. The author is someone who is clearly struggling, and trying to do her best to make ends meet by working multiple jobs that she makes clear she is desperately in search of. She also can't use her hands and is in chronic pain. Please, have some empathy.

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.

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).

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.

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.

I have the same thing as her and I built an off-grid homestead with my stupid useless arms, and I type until they’re so numb it’s like watching a hen peck for feed.

It never even occurred to me to make it a core part of my identity - it’s just pain and numbness, and they aren’t about to drop off and catch fire, even if it feels like it sometimes.

> This would be an instance of those mimetic "how I got to own a house at 29" stories where the first 6 steps are rational and the seventh is "have rich parents"

You don't need to have rich parents. I also make a living as a writer, and I'll say an alternative to having rich parents would be to get a high-paying job for a couple years and just save a little. Just for when the initial pay is a little low.

HN in the Common Era 2025:

"If you don't have rich parents, an alternative is to get a high-paying job".

Yes, because those grow all over on trees, ripe for the picking.

Like holy f**k, can anyone be more out of touch with reality?

Have you actually seen someone write an article like that where one of the instructive steps was "have rich parents"?

I have seen several. One interesting one was a "how I became an airline pilot at 21" video where the (obviously smart and hard working) young man talked about a life where he went to a high school with an aviation club, interning at an airline while in high school where THE CEO took personal interest in him and gave him one-on-one coaching. "Have rich parents" was not one of the steps explicitly but it was a massive part of the subtext.

For those who might eyeroll at this example, I believe it and find it a good citation. Have you done the math on what it costs to get a US commercial aviation license?

Just remember, Jack Antonoff (musician turned music producer for acts like St. Vincent) benefitted from his Dad being a millionaire diet supplement multi-level marketing huckster, Taylor Swift’s Dad was (and still is) a Merrill Lynch high earning banker, Redfoo of LmFAO is the son of Barry Gordy…he’ll, even Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is the niece of famous guitarist Tuck Andreas. Tell me with a straight face having those connections isn’t a thumb on the roulette wheel and I’ll politely go away for obvious reasons.

Having rich parent certainly helps. The problem with this line of thinking is that there are many many rich parents, but only one Tailor Swift. What happen to all other rich kids who also dream of being a singer? Can you say, "with straight face", that they can just became Taylor Swift if their dad was a Merrill Lynch banker?

There is also one and only Adele, whose father left when she was two and who had a very modest upbringing.

I can say with a straight face that having rich, well-connected parents hugely raises your odds of success if you have some native talent, for obvious reasons - in music you can buy equipment, hire teachers, PR people, and stylists, spend money on recording, and get easy access to industry insiders.

You can experiment without worrying that you will starve or be homeless if you fail.

Some corners of the arts are full of people like this - some talent, more money, so they get to have "careers" with nothing tangible on the line except loss of face. The family fortune protects them from everything except wilful self-destruction.

The obvious corollary is that failing to have rich, well-connected parents hugely lowers your odds of success, even if you have equivalent talent. Some people still succeed, for all kinds of reasons. But the odds are forever not in your favour.

It's not a binary, it's a significant tilt of the playing field.

Yeah it's really not the same odds and merit.

But the thing is people always use the extreme outlier as "proof" that something is possible. There is both survival bias and moral rationalisation when it comes from rich people.

Sure enough, such and such poor person who started with nothing and a terrible environment succeeded. But how many like them with comparable merit/talent didn't? And what was the key event that put them on the good trajectory? People always underestimate the importance of luck.

On the other hand, coming from a rich background practically ensures a minimal amount of success. Even if you fail to become good/great you will be able to truck along with very little risk and still access to plenty opportunities.

About 15 years ago, I met some people who had true generational wealth. The brother went into music and the sister into design/art. They currently have a moderate amount of success and the reason is solely the connections/opportunities their parents provided. The work isn't bad per se, but I have met people who are much more talented and never got anywhere near the same type of opportunities. Many (most) have to switch to some sort of boring job to put food on the table. Meanwhile a rich competitor can afford to only work on his stuff until he succeed/make it somehow.

Life is fundamentally unfair and it's not a big deal but I really hate it when people pretend, they "made it" purely on talent/merit/hard work.

If you take her to Nashville and buy her a career like Scott Swift did for Taylor, yes I can say with a straight face a multitude of other young women could be Taylor Swift…or eventually will be.

Alongside Adele you have JK Rowling who didn’t have all her cards aligned.

There was a post on reddit yesterday about how all of Wes Anderson's movies were financed by his billionaire cinephile friend despite them not making much money.

Another classic pilot career hack is to have a parent who is a pilot. Simple.

My ex's dad flew for a US carrier. I got to hear a bit about how raw a deal new pilots get these days. Apparently it's much less desirable as a job now as commercial aviation works on tighter margins.

That seems to be the general vibe on the aviation subreddit. Between the glamorous window shots and plane spotting posts are lamentations of pilots struggling with thier routes, and questioning uncertain careers.

Pilots talking with each other, what will they think of next!

I've seen a lot of articles where it's implicit. There seems to be a whole subgenre of Daily Telegraph "young person buys first house at 25" articles which lead with tales of their thriftiness and aspiration and bury the "parents paid most of the deposit" somewhere in the detail near the end.

That's the thing, you don't have to say it, sort of by definition. It's always implied, as is its opposite. Imagine a video or article or whatever, titled:

"How to get a Mediocre Job and live an Unremarkable Life"

Where the content of the article or video was, simply:

"Be born a human. You'll have a 99.99% chance of succeeding!"

It'd be pretty grim, it'd last about 15s to read or view, so no-one makes that video. Instead, they make videos about becoming pilots at 21, or owning your own house at 23, etc.

It's hard to accept these percentages as real, because it's about the opposite of what is presented on the content farm platforms, and that's partly as I said the fact that the story is too grim, but also the fact that the "unremarkable" people are not the ones producing "content".

No. I have only seen reddit memes and they generally relate to property ownership.