Can someone make a living at writing these days? I've written one novel (agent hasn't found a publisher yet), am working on the second, and have written several magazine articles (none reimbursed), and I've been wondering if I put more time into looking for work, if it's remotely possible to make decent money at it? I've heard some do it, but I really have no idea.
Living off fiction money requires some skills and lifestyle that not everyone is comfortable with.
First off, when you finally sell your novel that you've spent months-to-years of unpaid work on, your advance will likely be around $5-10K, which is a reasonable sum, but not enough for most single people to live on for a year, let's not talk about a family. That money will be paid out in anywhere from two to four checks, depending on your contract. It will also be sent to your agent, so they can pull their 15% and issue you a check in whatever timely fashion their office handles.
After the book is published (not an uncommon time to get the final installment of your advance), then it's generally 18 months before you have a prayer of getting any royalty check. IF there's a royalty check, considering the standard deduction for returns that can seriously damage the numbers being in your favor. If your sales hasn't exceeded your advance total, there will be no royalty check. Many publishers attempt to cut loses on first-time authors by giving them only what they think they will make as their advance, after all.
Then it's six months later for the next opportunity for a royalty check.
All of this is assuming that you didn't sign off on basket-accounting or some other trick to keep royalties from the author that's not unheard of in publishing contracts, of course.
I have several friends who sold 3-book contracts to NYC Fantasy publishers since 2000. All of them had reasonable sales. One friend's second contract included hard covers, so we know she was doing well. However, it still took each of them until the third book was released before they got a royalty check that hit in the thousands of dollars. And that was the royalties on all three books combined.
It's an honest question to ask whether or not you're able and willing to live on that kind of pay schedule AND whether or not you can survive on whatever may or may not come in. Most people want more security to their lives than what this provides. Some don't. It is very much a personal choice of what works for you.
Yeah, there's other options for writing for a living, as has been mentioned, but the OP specifically mentioned novels.