Private System Failure (So Far)

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a full-time fiction writer? To have a contract and write stories as your job, not just a hobby? Writing for work instead of pleasure can feel overwhelming, but that’s the future I imagined when I began writing crime novels inspired by my difficult life experiences.

I’ve written four books so far, but I haven’t gotten any recognition, appreciation, or support. I’ve taken courses on structure, characters, and settings, but they only help if I can stay focused. Writing 1,000 words a day feels like climbing a huge mountain. Editing courses might help, too, but when depression hits, I avoid those tasks.

I wanted to write, so I created a system to help me finish my novels. One by one, I completed four. They’re fully developed but haven’t been published yet. To revise them, I have to break my routine and step out of my comfort zone. I keep asking myself, “Am I ready for this?”

Not making money from writing is a real problem right now. After five years on Vocal and many Challenges, the results haven’t been great. But the writing I’ve done outside the site looks promising for the future. I’ve finished the first drafts of four fiction books, and I have study materials ready for editing and learning. So why haven’t I started? What’s holding me back?

Vocal challenges push me to revise poems for every submission, hoping to get even a small win. It’s about the money, which is slowly but painfully running out. It’s about the anxiety and depression that keep me awake all night. It’s about avoiding life when it feels unbearable.

There’s a line from a song that always helps me during those tough moments:

“Only the days we don't know yet are important.

These few moments are important, the ones we're waiting for.”

I fully realise that if I don’t publish these books and make a decent living from them, the last six years of my life might feel wasted. For most people, not mental health professionals, it can feel like a mix of mental and physical pain with no cure, where having a partner or a job seems impossible. It’s mostly mental pain and social anxiety that stop me from showing my true potential when it matters. I’m surprised by managers and recruiters who don’t take hiring seriously, even for temporary night shifts. But asking someone to interview at 10 p.m. for a night shift, especially in another city, takes real courage.

It’s the same with guys - I feel like I’ve run out of bad options, leaving no one to focus on. Only someone who’s been through real mental hell can understand the pain of failure. But even then, what are the chances that the person is sincere and not manipulative?

I’ve met - or maybe didn’t fully understand - manipulators of all kinds who are so blind they only realise their own broken lives after judging me for things that weren’t entirely my fault. Of course, I’m responsible for my life, not anyone else’s. But sadly, many people think that knowing one detail about someone’s life makes them a Supreme Court judge. That’s not how it works, and I won’t let those people back into my life.

All my negative experiences with the outside world show up in my work. At the start of my second, unfulfilled writing career, I lacked the inspiration to fill the pages, and people around me seemed to notice. They created situations that were impossible to live through, but so vivid and important for a crime novel that I felt I had to write them down and turn them into a story. From this, I developed a system mixing real life and imagination, intertwined like a dance. It’s unique, like any writer’s system, but it only works for writing.

First drafts are important, of course, but without a second look, they turn into heavy pieces of fiction, sitting on my laptop, hidden from the world. They could grow and help someone solve their own problems, just like other crime writers helped me keep going through tough times.

Adversity works best in fiction, not in real life, where it becomes a heavy burden you have to carry every day. After this endless struggle, there’s little time or energy left to write about it again. Only distance helps keep the flow going, and that’s where imagination steps in. Then even the worst reality becomes art, changing how we see things and becoming something new - something that transforms life and helps rather than hurts.

I’m not writing these words for pity. I’m writing to put my struggles on a blank page and realise that even writing 20,000 words in one month (my record from December 2025) doesn’t guarantee a traditional book release. An author has to keep pushing through every step until the work is truly done. Even if that means fighting the death wish that sits comfortably on my shoulder every day. I have to swat it away to get to the core. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always worth it, but sometimes it takes much longer than I thought it would at the start of this journey.

As Joyce Carol Oates said, finishing short stories is good for your mental health - just finishing something. Finishing books over several years, pouring my heart and soul into them, and completing them at the highest level would be a dream come true. It’s a dream born from a lonely teenage mind that knew books were the only loyal friends. That still holds in my broken adult life.

Writing gives me a sense of fulfilment, though my father’s struggle with overeating led to his early death. Writing is my future - it shows a way from negativity to something better, like even the darkest worlds make sense in crime fiction. Writing is life.

It’s time to create a new system and move forward. Don’t you think?