It's pretty non-traditional, but: in my spare time, evenings and weekends, I wrote a couple of bad novels. This took a long time. Then I took time off between c

It's pretty non-traditional, but: in my spare time, evenings and weekends, I wrote a couple of bad novels. This took a long time. Then I took time off between contract jobs to write a good novel. Then I sold the novel, and got a couple of subsequent book deals, enough to spend six years as a full-time novelist, which was pretty great. Then I parlayed that into magazine journalism. I eventually went back into software -- writing is not great for one's bank balance unless you hit it extremely big; my gross income is now more than triple what it was during those years as a full-time writer -- but I'm still an occasional journalist and even more occasional author, and those were an excellent six years. I think the tl;dr is to try to turn what you enjoy doing in your spare time into your secondary profession.