Hrrm, reddit seems to have eaten my initial response to this.

It took me a while to realize that I wanted to be an editor. I was the guy everyone on my floor in college got to fix their papers, but at the time I didn't really think of it as something I'd do as a career. I've always loved reading, but hate every piece of fiction I've ever written. The collaborative aspect of polishing up someone else's work, tweaking a phrase here and there to more clearly reflect what they mean, is something I get a lot of satisfaction out of.

I got pretty lucky, as far as getting into freelancing. My business partner offered to edit for a self-published author that had a good plot but a lot of basic mistakes. I had just quit my management job and had some time to kill, so she contacted me to do the proofread and fix all the commas. I think we turned it around in about two weeks. That author sung our praises to her writing group, and we got another half-dozen people asking us to work with them. From there we decided to make it a going concern and incorporated.