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.