small status update (Patreon)

I like to be open and transparent about things, so this is basically some kind of personal update about me and my work. I'm in an especially terrible place about it, lower than I think I've ever been in my life. A lot of it is external factors - the general worsening horrors of the world, the normalization of AI replacing creatives, the normalization of theft and plagiarism of creative works by both AI and other people, the overall miserable state of publishing (indie and trad), and how useless doing anything against it all seems. And also due to personal issues, I'm looking back at nearly 20 years of having been doing this and feeling like I've managed nothing worthwhile at all. My dreams shrink smaller and smaller every year, every day, and my only hope now - that a few people are reading what I write and enjoying it - even seems out of reach. I have no idea what I'm doing with these books once I've finished posting them here, in a place that feels safe enough that it's not being scraped by AI or stolen by bad actors (though at this point I'd almost be flattered someone considered my work good enough to steal and try to make money from), but I have no further goal or envisioned future. I don't have the personality for publishing of either sort, which either requires unshakeable belief in yourself or the ability to be a popular content creator, of which I have neither. Even something like Amazon self-pub seems...unattainable, and also rife with other issues. There's no middle ground currently between having your work be available to read, and having something steal it, and then a million people justifying why the stealing is good, actually.

I have no solutions to any of this, but writing is a heavy and lonely uphill battle for me right now because of all of this. It's why I decided to back up posting Incidence with a story that has 20+ chapters essentially ready to go, because I knew I wouldn't hit my single tiny goal of finishing one chapter a month. And I also feel that my feelings are leaking into my writing, making it lifeless and miserable. I've rewritten the current chapter(s) I'm stuck on so many times that they feel unsaveable, and that nobody will enjoy reading them. I don't know how to fix any of this and have no answers, but I want to be open about this. All I really want is for a few people to enjoy some escapism for a few minutes, and it increasingly feels like that's impossible to achieve. I would hope that if my writing has basically become unpleasant to engage with, someone would let me know. That's the absolute last thing that I want, and I'd step back to emotionally collect myself for a while if that were happening. Right now, hoping that one or two people are enjoying reading these chapters is winning out.

I'm not looking for any particular response other than I just want to be open. Scams and extreme grifting are the other thing currently wrecking their way through publishing right now, and I'd rather be known for being a little too honest sometimes if nothing else.