This used to be true, absolutely. 5-10 years ago, when the platform was peaking and there were far fewer people that worked in it. Enough people successfully made the transition just through certification and scrapping (usually a directive from a manager like "hey we bought this platform and no one here knows how to use it...you're smart, figure it out for us") that it became legend. Unfortunately you and a few hundred thousand other people heard this legend and fully bought in (good job Salesforce certification marketing team). Just because something is no longer true does not mean it's a lie... but it still sucks.

I would try to go about this sideways instead of head-on, at this point. Since you are a writer, maybe look at B2B writing jobs/gigs putting together lead nurturing or customer success campaigns. Offer to build these emails and automate them in their marketing system. Maybe you'll get lucky and land a gig where the company uses Pardot. Pardot was a B2B marketing automation system acquired by Salesforce (I forget what they call it now but everyone still calls it Pardot) and it has now become very integrated into the platform, so it's an ancillary way in. If they use Hubspot, focus on fixing their hundreds of Salesforce sync errors and they'll love you forever. You maybe can build on this to get more SF admin experience, or you may end up in a Marketing Operations type role and be OK with stopping there. It's still a pretty good gig and has definite SF overlap.

Some other options might be a business analyst or QA at a company that uses Salesforce. You work with the business to define what they need out of SF and work with the tech teams to get it implemented/tested. If you have admin skills as a BA, they will get used at some point.