[Meta] I think our chamber very detrimental to our mental health and creativity

I have been wanting to talk about this for a while. This is a very interesting chamber and has been a major help when I’m working on my story. I love seeing what people have created and the creative process is fun and rewarding to me as well. <br><br>I only have 1300 followers and I don’t post that much, but sometimes I’ll get 1000+ views on a post. This is a lot of new eyes on my work and it’s great to feel like I’m really reaching an audience with my story. It’s nice to feel like I’m good at something creative. <br><br>The problem for me is that when you take a step back and look at this chamber as a whole, it’s kind of depressing. Let me explain what I mean by that<br><br>I am not sure how many of us there are, but it’s in the hundreds of thousands. It’s crazy to think about that. The hundreds of thousands of people who all have dreams of becoming published authors (or very least having our work read by others) and we all have to compete against each other. We want our work to be seen and appreciated so we can very hard to be the best we can be. <br><br>I very rarely see posts by people who have successfully become published authors. I’ve been on this chamber for a few years now and I think I’ve only seen 4. This is not to say it doesn’t happen, I’m sure it’s more than 4 who have actually been published, but our sample size is so small (it very rare that I even see a post from someone who has been published) that it’s disheartening. It’s almost like it’s hopeless. <br><br>But we love to write. We can’t help it. It’s our passion and it’s very detrimental to our mental health and relationships. I’m 42 years old and I’ve been writing for over 20 years and nothing has come of it. No one has every read longer than a few chapters of anything I’ve written and no one ever will. I’m still writing 5 hours a day.<br><br>I know you all feel the same way and I don’t think there’s a way out of this cycle for most of us. There are too many of us and too few spots available for authors. This isn’t even brought up that much on this sub because we know it’s true and very detrimental to us bringing this up. <br><br>I know our best bet is to self publish, but that doesn’t change the fact that most of us will be ignored. I don’t think this sub does anything other than make us feel good. We get our work seen, we feel like we’re writers, and we get to see very interesting work from other writers on here. It might be good practice, but maybe not. <br><br>That’s what I wanted to say. I’m sorry if it came across as negative or whiny. I just think we all need to understand that 90% of us will not be authors. We’re wasting our time. It’s very good for the economy, however, because it keeps us working.