New Writer's Depressing Experiences

Hello, everyone. I'm 25, and I am fairly new to the world of writing, particularly in creative writing, though I can't say that I'm a complete newcomer, since I've been studying Creative Writing for the past 5 years. <br><br>The truth is that I'm incredibly talented in creative writing, as many have acknowledged, even people that I believed were naturally gifted and more skilled than me. And I'm not trying to brag. I've been complimented by professors and students, editors, beta-readers, and journalists. I've been told that I have an incredible ability to create good, believable characters; kill my darlings by letting go of clichés and old writing tropes; and that the way I describe and describe settings and scenes is always so vivid and incredible that it immerses the reader and makes them feel as if they're living the story. <br><br>When I was 22, I started writing my first novel, and that's when I began to experience what I call 'writer depression.' It started with a Great Am I Good Enough crisis. I would doubt myself all the time, and I began to compare myself to other writers – which I know is wrong – but I couldn't help it. I felt as if I wasn't as good as these established writers. I remember thinking 'I will never be as good as them,' or feeling like I'd been doing everything wrong and that I had to toss everything I had done so far and start over from scratch. <br><br>I was more likely to delete things I wrote than save them, and that's how I lost my first novel, just because I was so depressed, anxious, and stressed out about not being up to standards that I didn't even set for myself. I tried to take a break from writing for a while by doing something completely different, but I realized that I wasn't good at anything else, and it made me feel like I was worthless and useless. <br><br>I stopped writing for a while, and just read. I read a lot, and I tried to analyze what was so good about established writers and their works so I could learn from them. I did, but it still made me feel bad about myself. <br><br>It wasn't until I turned 23, that I took the leap to send my work to be professionally published, and that was another massive stressful experience. I had never sent anything out before, so I didn't know how to do it, and there were a lot of mistakes, and a lot of them were silly mistakes. It took me months to figure out how the whole process worked, and I remember crying a lot over my rejections (I got 4 rejections and 1 yes, which thankfully worked out). <br><br>The editors I worked with were incredibly kind, but I still felt like I didn't know what I was doing. And even though the story was incredibly well received, that made me feel bad too, because I felt like I didn't deserve that much attention and praise. <br><br>I was 24 when I started working on my second big project, which is the one I'm working on now, and I spent the entire year applying for writing contests and literary magazines. I applied for somewhere around 50, and got rejected by about 20. I won 4, and I got another yes from a literary magazine. <br><br>This year, I bought a subscription to Duotrope, and I've applied to about 15 places, and I got rejected by 4, and I'm waiting on the others. However, this whole process has taken a toll on my mental health, because I feel overwhelmed and anxious about not meeting standards, about not being good enough, about not being able to deliver, and about not being able to write fast enough. <br><br>And I'm not sure, but I feel like this is the darkest point in my mental health as a writer. I have a constant need for reassurance, but I'm too afraid of reaching out to ask for it, because I don't want to seem insecure or weak, or I don't want to be seen as someone that's aspiring to be a writer but isn't good enough. <br><br>I feel like I'm trapped in a vicious cycle of self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and overwhelming stress, and I'm not sure of how to let go or how to escape it. I wish things could be better, but I'm not sure of how to make it better. I'm not sure what to do, and I'm not sure of where to go with this. Any advice or suggestions that you might have would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advanced for reading this. <br><br>P.S: Please don't tell me to write for fun.