Update

So I took something like six or seven months off from really thinking about publishing. I've been writing, not a lot, but every day, but I haven't made anything worth publishing in nearly a year, and the past set of submissions (over a dozen) were all rejections.

I got a few encouraging rejections, but still they are getting to me, and there hasn't really been anything that has popped up on its own. Also I haven't really met any writers here in MPLS and I'm falling out of contact with the writers I knew in WA so now I feel pretty isolated I/R/T literature as an imminent thing (as opposed to an abstract thing, I guess).

With a little time on my hands I looked back on my manuscript I wrote last year and the idea of submitting that made me sort of nauseuous. I feel like I can't really do anything until I offload that so I put it up on KDP, just to have it somewhere else. I looked at small presses to submit to and it was the most depressing thing. Just not worth the effort. You can spend hours upon hours looking for presses and then they really should buy their books and read them to find out what they publish so that takes you another like couple months and then their subs are closed and then if you find one that seems like it works the chances of getting you novel submitted is less than 5 percent or whatever, and even some of these small ones ask for an agent so, I just don't know what to do. I still like writing (I wish I could do it more) but I just don't really know how I am supposed to approach publishing as a part of that. Whether I should hustle as hard as I can or just let it be and just focus on writing and just let it happen when it happens. It seems like both ways are dead ends. I guess.

I'm not sure if that is a good idea or not, I don't expect anyone to buy it, but it is there, it is externalized.

I put up my first manuscript up as well. Here

I guess it sort of feels like a cop out. Like none of the authors admire put their work up on KDP, so I won't be like them, or something.

I feel like I never really hooked into a community of writers and I feel like I at least expended some effort on that, but it never really came to anything. It seems like everyone I talked to just got their work published becuase they knew someone and I've never really known anyone who does that stuff, and even when I tried to meet people who were in publishing it never came to anything.

I guess I'm not one to hustle.

I don't know I want to tell myself that right now isn't the time or something, but I'm losing patience, I've lost patience and I just want to move on, I want to throw this old work behind me and move onto something actually worthwhile.

I've ruminating on something recently and started to work on it, but I just feel like it won't go anywhere either.

I didn't write or read much because I was learning to code, which is cool because I have a decent paying job now, but I also sort of feel like I am getting away from my core priority. Like I was so excited a few years ago at the prospect at being a full time writer, or devoting my main ambition to pursuing fiction, but now I've spent all this time and money and effort doing something totally separate from that and I feel like I have compromised myself or compromised my goals.