Becoming A Writer/Breaking Into The Business

I'm going to assume for some reason that at least a few of the posters here either have experience in the field, or have researched it.

How did you get into it? How did you manage to get published? How does someone with no experience get jobs as a freelancer?

I know, it's kind of a stupid thing to ask here, but I've felt kind of overwhelmed in trying to get into it myself. I'm often told I'm a good storyteller, and I describe and explain things well, and I do enjoy writing. How am I supposed to compete with people with teams of writers who each went to college specifically for the writing field though?

Wow, this gives me some hope. I'm not the OP, but I've been playing with the idea of writing for a long time now. I like it, but I don't have that "YOU'RE NOT A WRITER UNLESS YOU OMG HAVE TO WRITE ALL THE TIME" thing. Fuck, I just want to make some money doing something I might be good at.