Fool's Gold

Ok, real quick, speaking as a librarian, you absolutely cannot despair about the adult literacy crisis and shame adults for reading fiction books you do not personally care for or think are "challenging" at the same time. It doesn't work with kids, and it doesn't work with adults.

me reading jane eyre for the first time and not knowing a single thing about it beforehand and figuring okay well its a coming of age story and here's this haters to lovers romance i guess its pretty normal and then grace poole fucking bites someone

One day, when I'm dead, someone at the Gates will ask me if I did anything to qualify for admission to Writers' Heaven. And then I'll list all the books I wrote, and all the good deeds I tried to do, and the worthwhile causes I supported, and they will just stare at me, unsmiling and unimpressed. And finally, in desperation I'll say "Well, I was the first one to put David Tennant and Michael Sheen together..." And the unimpressed expression will become a huge and delighted smile. "You did that?" they will say. "God LOVES them!"

This is an extremely frustrating trend to watch happen. Indie writers already work so hard, and there's nothing they can do. Amazon doesn't give a damn, they profit either way.

Story idea when you try to actually write it:

Story idea when you first rewrite it:

Your story when somebody else sees it:

Also possibly relevant is that probably when Van Gogh finished Starry Night, he jumped up and down in frustration for a while because it didn’t look as good as it had in his head.