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?

>>3
Also not OP, but my problem with deciding on a publisher is that everyone I've read seems to be published by Del Rey/Random House, which seems to have a pretty fuck-no policy on unsolicited submissions, and are pretty insistent about having an agent give the manuscripts to them. The only one I've found that's open to them is Tor.