TLDR: I'm being incredibly petty and stupid and yelling about things that probably make other authors shake their heads.
I already regret typing this, but I'm hoping some of the feeling will go away by sharing it. Please, feel free to tear into me as violently and as harshly as you see fit for my current state of mind.
Long:
The only thing I have a ridiculous affinity for is fiction writing. And ultimately, it's an incredibly subjective thing to even gauge. So, my first sentence is meaningless. I don't write accurate histories or non-fictions, I write bullshit I come up with in the shower or when I'm completely off my gourd on alcohol and other things I shouldn't be abusing because I can't even handle being awake. But hey, I'm not talking about that dark road.
I fucking HATE that I can write and do nothing else. All my life I've valued visual media. I love video games, anime, manga, macabre painting, charcoal abstract shit, but can do none of it. It took me my entire life of scratching at paper to get to where I'm at and it's just silly doodles that I don't even value because it's not the art I love to look at. And yet, I can cough and words fall onto a napkin and someone on the internet says it's a fantastic read and they want to know more. FUCK.
But you know, I've said many times to myself and to others that I love what I do. I'm a fucking writer. My shit isn't perfect to everyone, and it's not supposed to. But it's really good to a great many people (I guess, because I have a big silent audience). I have grand moments of unchained confidence where I laugh and declare to the heavens that my fiction is in a league of its own and I cannot be rivalled. But, but, but, then what am I supposed to do with this?
I have a stack of "No, fuck off" emails and letters from literary agents and publishers since 2010. I kept telling myself that I'm just asking the wrong people. Or the market isn't in the right phase. Or my time will come SOMEDAY.
FUCK SOMEDAY.
I don't want to be fucking 70 years old and then the right person likes one of the countless books I finished in that time. I don't want to die and then someone stumbles over my library and then someone else makes a YouTube video about how I worked all my life to makes ends meet and lived in obscurity.
"But you have over 1k subscribers you fucking ungrateful sod"
That number is meaningless. My views and likes and comments don't correlate to that number. Some of you have a fraction of my audience but have dedicated readers that express how much they love what you do. And I know I'm belittling the few of you that actually tell me you love my work. For that I'm sorry. But it tears my fucking heart apart when my daughters go to Barnes and Noble or see a bookshelf in any random store and say they'll see me there someday.
"Finish a fucking book then, fuckhead."
I finished three books on Amazon and was quite pleased. Sure, one purchase a month isn't anything to write home about, but it was better than being dead. Ouch those covers were expensive but I said I wouldn't cheap out or set the bar low for them. Then I took a year to make a sequel. Paid a lot of money for the cover because I care a lot about that shit. All so that, BASICALLY NO ONE WOULD READ IT. That was devastating. Why didn't the traffic of the first book at least mirror the second? They didn't actually care about what would happen next? Those finished books are on here too and they have less subs than other books that aren't anywhere near finished. So, I don't even know what to do with all of that information.
So, online episode writing then. Hey, this is neat. And it's like a community! But what happens when these books are all done? People bitch and moan in the Play Store reviews of the app that you have to pay for comics and books. OH WELL, THAT'S GREAT TO KNOW THAT PEOPLE WANT IT ALL FOR FREE. GUESS I'M ON THE RIGHT PATH HERE THEN.
I'm going to write all these books on Tapas, have a stupidly-enormous library that you can read for free as I beg for table scrap Ko-Fi donations or hope they at least buy the Amazon version, while I continue to work full-time and stress myself out over life and bills and not affording anything and my stupid truck keeps falling apart and my kids have needs and fuck fuckity whatever.
"Well, as long as you're having fun and enjoy what you're-"
Shut the fuck up.