Salary
Average Salary: $88,000
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $3,674,000
Parents, don't let your children grow up to be writers...unless they're going to be medical writers. A big perk of the medical writing is the money. Not mountains of money, mind you, but respectable hillocks of cash. Medical writers get paid more than just a typical writer, since they have specialized skills and have mastered scientific jargon (source). They make pretty good money—usually in the range of $75,000 with a bachelor's degree, or $80,000 to $90,000, with an advanced degree (source).
If you're a freelancer, you can still make more than a subsistence wage, but it's not as consistent or predictable. One month, you may be super busy, pushing out articles in your sleep, but other months may be slow. A good freelancer could make a nice $100,000, but a yearly salary of $65,000 is more common. But either way, it's a far cry from the starving writer slaving away on that sci-fi novel about aliens that sound just like Justin Bieber but look like Sasquatch.