Has anybody here made a living writing full-time, and if so, how long did it take?

Is there anyone here who has published books like has an agent and everything but does a gig on the side? I imagine that's most of us. I've only been published in magazines a couple of times, just local ones. I would love to just write fiction full time but it doesn't seem that will ever even be a possibility anymore.

People are too involved with their Xbox and iPhone's apps. No one enjoys a good read. What do you think?

I think you should drop the writing and become a programmer of Xbox games and iPhone apps.

I've been working on it for twenty years. I have yet to produce a novel I'm proud of, although other people have told me I've written commercially viable fiction. New writers break into the publishing business every year, so it can be done. But honestly, earning a living as an author is a goal with low odds. The odds of ever writing a bestseller are equal to the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.

Send me the first chapter of your best manuscript, and I'll look at it and tell you if I think you're in any way close to being publishable. Why should you trust my judgment? Well… Why should you trust anyone else's judgment here? I guarantee you, Stephen King is not lurking here in Books and Authors, waiting to give us all the secrets to being the world's bestselling author.

I know several hundred agented published authors online a maybe a dozen or so in person. Of those authors, if memory serves, four make a living at it, with no other source of income.

Not only do you have to write fast, well, and marketable, which you can control, but you have to sell well, which you can't control, to make a living at it. For that reason, I urge writing hopefuls to keep their day jobs and write in their spare time, until the writing income is substantially greater than their job income for at least a year.

Nothing is easy. Whether you write books, write software, run a sandwich shop, no business is easy and competition is always huge. Thats what makes America great though, you could be in Russia or China where no matter what you do the government owns your work.

Not me at this stage because I write too slow, but I know multiple people who do. My sister does, but she doesn't write fiction she's a copywriter.