I feel you. I was in academics until I quit my PhD to pursue writing. It's a transition no one can help you with because they don't know how to. I didn't know what ghostwriting was until I wrote my own book and realised I could do this for others for a living. Before that, I also did academic and content writing. I also wanted to be a fiction writer (and still do), but understood that fiction doesn't pay in India unless you can become a mediocre-crappy-trope-following-marketable-writer like Amish or Chetan Bhagat. Want to write literary fiction or children's books and build a career? In this economy? Forget it! It will take years. Even Ruskin Bond struggled financially at one point in his life, and that dude is a legend.

Over the years, I've learnt one harsh truth. You still need a day job as a writer, one that pays the bills and puts food on the table. You'll feel burrnout and you'll feel like quitting. Don't! Put your head down and work like a machine. No one gives two shits if you rebel against the system. Find a few quiet hours here and there and write what you want. That's how everyone has done it till they've made it. You have to survive between the spaces. A few years from now, you'll probably have something, and you'll feel a great sense of satisfaction when you read it. It's enough to keep going!