Nimphy: there have been times in my life when I have earned all or most of my living as a writer, but that wasn't writing fiction. At least not my own! When I was much younger, and newly widowed with five little kids, and desperately looking for any way to earn a living that would let me work from home, I did several stints of working as a combination of translator and ghostwriter for somebody who had a truly fascinating tale to tell of their experiences, but who was firstly not a native English speaker and secondly was a terrible writer. The result was some books that sold very well, and for me, being able to feed my household for some time. Apart from that, most of what I wrote and sold was technical articles of a botanical or geological nature for museum journals and the like, or lifestyle pieces to do with gardening or food, especially wild food and foraging, because that was an area in which I had expertise, and articles about nature, bushcraft, wilderness survival and the like.
I had a few short stories published, mostly SF, some song lyrics and a good deal of poetry, and scored a few poetry awards which, again, kept my household going for awhile. But the main thing about earning a living as a writer was being flexible, and being able to write to a topic, as newspaper and magazine writers do. Certainly we have on the Forum some people who have been full-time newspaper reporters; they may be able to explain more. I've worked for a newspaper, but far more often as a proofreader, back in the days when proofreaders were people rather than machines as they now are. And a lot of my writing, especially the nature stuff, was done by hand or on a small portable typewriter when I was actually living in wilderness, or on small farms in the backbeyond - no computers or writing programmes then, partly because it was before small computers, often because no electricity!
It's possible to write a bestseller first time, to pull off a Kerouac or a J.K. Rowling, but far more writers have a lengthy 'journeyman' stage in their careers, where they are working at something else to make their main living, while gradually building up a body of paying work. At least nowadays the online world makes earning a living as a writer easier, and cuts out most of the middlepeople who skimmed off most of the profit from a writer's work. Though there is also a good deal less quality control!
We've all seen how hard Minna works to make a living from what I believe is one of the better webcomics available, and I know several people who sell their work online, that is, they have a website from which the book can be downloaded for a fee. Of those people, the result ranges from 'small but steady income' (that's the textbook on permaculture gardening in the wet tropics), to 'a random few dollars here and there' (that's the modern poet). But it can be done.
Anyway, the point of all that was that surviving as a writer is possible, but the only way to get there is to write. And keep writing, refining your techniques and improving your tools as you go.
And about plot: plot can spring from events: 'in this situation, with these people, what can I have happen that will make the characters grow and interact in interesting ways? And if I change one element, say she catches a bus instead of flying, how does that change the story? What if all her family dies while she is on that bus? How would that change what she does next?' Or the story can be character-and-situation driven: 'being himself, and being put in that situation, what else could he possibly do?'. But to do the last one, you really need to understand your characters, and to have fleshed them out at least a bit.
