The answer: Move to San Diego, work in retail.
Or so is the only real moral I glean from this Q&A on CNN.com today with singer-songwriter Erin McCarley (pictured right; credit: Reid Rolls), who gets the star treatment here because McCarley, a Dallas native, recently had her song "Pitter-Pat" featured on Grey's Anatomy, and, once its released, her song "Love, Save The Empty" will be heard in an apparently quite intergral part of the movie He's Just Not That Into You.
Meanwhile, it's a little generic--predictably, it sounds like every other Grey's Anatomy band--but McCarley's music's pretty pleasing, I think.
(Also: She's kind of a fox).