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Hmm. I posted the progress of my novel today in the Post Your Progress thread in the Writer's forum, providing a summary of what I've written in the story for the past week. The message I just got? "@Slots: that story summary you posted has nothing to do with story progress." So I read what you're "supposed" to write in the progress thread and people are all writing about word counts and s**t. Oh, I guess "progress" is bragging about how big of a word count you have rolleyes Writing is about the art of telling a story. It doesn't matter how damn long it is. For gosh sakes. Or maybe she thought I was posting a summary of my novel? No no.

I hate to sound like I have a big head, but I hate how some writers only care about word count and page count and not their content. On a similar note, I also hate how unoriginal many young writers are. It doesn't give me much hope for the future of writing, and thank god I've been writing for myself (mostly) since I was a young child. There are a few writers who are younger than me whom I follow, so its not all of them who are awful. It also kind of gets on my nerves when they're praising eachother's bad writing, but these are also the same people who thought Twilight was brilliant, or worse, didn't read Twilight because "its what all the uncool kids were doing". :: face palms::

The good news? Whenever I give them some sort of constructive criticism most of them treat me with extreme respect, like I actually know what I'm talking about and admit that my advice made their stories quite a bit better. Is that a win? I guess I have to settle with something.

I also have this private...I guess this is the only way to describe it: ">.<"-ness of wanting my novels read by an audience. I enjoy my own books quite a bit, and am often drawn in my the word choice especially. I want to share this joy with others. So far, I've mostly gotten ignorant teens who wish to bash my work for their own amusement to see my reaction of their stomping on my baby. We call them trolls. :: Sigh:: before I turned 14, people were mystified by my ability to write novels, and actually read them. They thought my work was brilliant, and I could see on their faces that they were genuinely surprised. Now, ten years later, I am ignored and no one cares. Around where I live, people laugh when I say I write novels. Irl, people think I'm joking or immediately assume they are bad. Its a huge confidence killer.

I don't really know what to do. Maybe some day I will have the money to hire an agent and they can go and submit my works to appropriate publishers and maybe, just maybe, a book will be picked up. But who knows how long it would stay in print? :: sigh:: What am I working so hard towards?

I have many dreams, and I work hard to achieve them (body and spirit willing), but will they ever come to pass?

This brings about feelings of unhappiness.