Talk to some freelance writers and you might think that choosing this career path means living in a 1978 Gremlin and subsisting on macaroni and cheese warmed up under the hood. Take cheer; you can do better. If you’ve got the talent and are willing to run your writing operation as a business, you can get lots of satisfaction out of your work and make a good living. Really.

"You’ve got to find a niche to set yourself apart from the pack," says Kim Rufer-Bach, a freelance writer based in Boulder Creek, a mountain town in northern California. Rufer-Bach has taken many kinds of writing assignments over the past 16 years, but the glue that holds it all together is editing she does for other writers. Rufer-Bach runs a forum for editors and writers on AOL; this activity brings her lots of leads for gigs helping writers polish manuscripts, book proposals and query letters.

Book author Pat Marcello has also succeeded by specializing. The market for children’s literature "is booming, in books and magazine," says Marcello, who lives in Bradenton, Florida. "There’s a lot of opportunity for non-fiction for kids 9 to 12," she adds. Marcello has written five titles for young people for Ariel Books, on pop-culture topics ranging from the Titanic to Matt Damon.

How do writers break into a new line of business? "Knowing somebody. I knew somebody who knew a producer," says screenwriter Skip Press, who plies the Hollywood trade from his home base in Burbank, Calif.

But Press does not live by script and option sales alone. The business is too fickle and the income too unpredictable. "I like to diversify," he says, "I don’t try to make money on just one thing." So Press also writes for other media, including entertainment Web sites and books, including Writer's Guide to Hollywood Producers, Directors, and Screenwriter's Agents.

Do you sell your writing for a flat fee, allowing your publisher to scoop up nearly all the profits through years of ongoing sales and via distribution channels you never even thought about? If you want to make a go of it with your writing business, you’d better start thinking about it.

Marcello, the children’s book author, jumped at the chance to write a short book about Diana Spencer soon after her death. "An editor I knew needed a writer, so it fell into my lap. They wanted it in 30 days and I said, OK. " The result was Diana: The Life of a Princess, and sales continue at a brisk pace. But Marcello was caught up in the heat of the moment and settled for a relatively modest flat fee and no royalties. She’s rethinking her approach to negotiating book contracts, as should any writer who doesn’t receive royalties or residuals.

And what about international publication rights? Television treatments of your books? Online and other new-media republication of your magazine articles? If you have any chance of reselling your intellectual property through these channels, you should work out a negotiation strategy before you sign another contract. Otherwise you’d better get used to those Chez Gremlin dinners by streetlight.