I am a failed writer. I wrote books, and screenplays fulltime for over 20 years. It ruined my life. I'm now a broke 41-year-old virgin living with his mom. And I no longer believe in God!

I started writing books when I was 17 years old, or when I was in high school in the early 2000s. My first book was a novella -- a parody of "Lord of the Rings." It was terrible, so I didn't send it out, but I continued writing, thinking I'd get better. I did get better but it was never good enough. I kept on writing, and continually got rejected.

Rejections by the way, usually, are not like "we choose not to publish this." Rejections are zero response. Most publishers don't give you a rejection. Their rejection is silence.

Anyway, I dedicated myself fulltime to writing. I did have a few low-pay jobs here, and there, but nothing substantial. Most of my time was spent writing. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Every time, I got the same result: rejection.

But after a rejection, I'd tell myself something like, "Okay, I'll try again. The next one will succeed." And it never happened. Yet I kept going, trying to stay positive. Rinse, and repeat, nothing changed. It was hard on me mentally. I felt like killing myself. To be honest, I still feel like killing myself.

I didn't know what to do. I kept digging a bigger hole with my writing. I tried self-publishing, and that was a big pile of failure, too. My earnings from self-publishing have been less than $200 total. Closer to $100, actually.

Despite the numerous failures, I wrote. To date, I've written over 30 screenplays, and 24 books. People will download my books for free, but if you ask for a dollar -- nope.

Self-publishing kinda sucks these days. There aremore hurdles than ever before. Platforms pay far less than they once did, and we all know that AI writing has added to the slush pile. It'd hard to stand out. And readers are very negative. If your book isn't perfect, they'll give you one-star.

Sure, okay, but if your first review is a one-star that pretty much kills your book. That's happened to me. First review is a one-star, and then that's what it stays at because nobody else will give your book a chance.

I feel a lot of readers don't understand how hard it is to write a book, or what its purpose is. They think of books like movies. Dumb entertainment. And publishers know this. They don't look for quality books. They want to publish dumb books that will sell well.

I wrote a book once, and it was well-received, but it did not get (traditionally) published because they didn't think it would sell well. They only give a damn about the numbers to tell you the truth.

But it makes sense. The average person spends very little money on books. The market is small. Well, I'm not here to complain about the industry. I just wanted to vent a little, and tell the few of you what's been going on.

I got stuck in a rut, and ate shit. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't spend a minute writing. It's all been a waste of time. Writing a book is like screaming at a cloud. What does it do?

Society has ADHD. If people read, they read tweets from assholes, and garbage social media comments. Yeah, I'm bitter!

And why not? I hate my life. Every year gets worse, and worse. Nothing's ever improved. Bad stuff keeps happening. Lots of people dying, you know. Cancer, various health problems, financial ruin, etc.

It's all caused me to stop praying, and believing in God. I'm not anti-religion but it's kind of bullshit. (Kind of?) When God doesn't answer your prayers they blame you! You didn't pray hard enough. You didn't believe enough. You didn't have enough faith. Have more patience... How many more decades must I suffer, and pray? Hmm? Four decades of praying isn't enough for you, God? Another ten, is it? Or till I'm in the ground?

But listen, if you believe in God, and it brings you calm, and peace, go ahead. You're lucky. Why stop that? I'm not trying to persuade anyone that God isn't real. I myself just can't believe in God.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm all over the map here. I was trying to tell my story, and failed. Really, besides the occasional tragedy, each year's been almost the same as the last. Write, get angry, cry, get into arguments with family, go to a funeral, look at the fly in my wallet, and think about ending it.

Does anyone have any questions? Apologies for the wall of text.