Not now, not ever

If I ever did find my "voice" as a writer, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't like what I would find.

I can't write happy and fulfilling stories because I'm not happy and fulfilled. The best I ever get is to have my frustration and dissatisfaction temporarily smothered in busy work.

I can't write exciting stories because I am so damned ponderous and full of admiration for my own damned prose. Everything comes out reading like a stump speech by the seventh-place candidate.

I don't want to write autobiographically-based fiction because I find myself a subject not worthy of close examination, except as an example of how NOT to be a happy, fulfilled person. Any character I write who is clearly not me suffers from that fact that I am practically sociopathic in my inability to understand and connect with other human beings. I feel as thought the only things I understand are the negative emotions of life, and writing characters with such a relentlessly flawed perception and experience would just give readers a headache. I get a headache just living my own life... why would anyone else want to see anything through my eyes? What is it like to be faithful? To be happy? To be secure? To be truly and completely in love, with no doubts or hesitancy? To know what you are doing, where you're going? To know what you want?

I have plenty of things started, from back when I had bursts of enthusiasm and energy. Now, I have no enthusiasm for anything. These false starts, which ground down into page after page of long, boring crap, do not represent the first fingerpaints of a neonatal artist. They are, in fact, the short-lived half-sparks that are the only possible product of muddy flint.

This is a waste of time and energy. I will never be a competent writer of fiction, let alone a successful one.

I feel every failure a thousand times over, whether anyone else sees them or not. At this point, I don't want to write anymore. I just wish I could stop needing to.