Do you think you can write fiction successfully?

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I love writing with a passion. Have more than a dozen stories I'd like to finish, but I don't dare to show any of it to anyone else for fear of how they'd react to it. Do you love writing but ever have doubts about whether your writing would be received well? The reason I say this is because, people find me to be so odd due to Asperger's and part of me thinks that no one would like my writing for the same reason.

Story of my life. I have shared my stories with my wife and friends, but am too lacking in self confidence to try to go the traditional route for publishing. It doesn't help that I personally know outstanding writers who have tried to get published, but only get rejections. Doubtlessly, that is because publishers are more interested in a market a piece of fiction can make money in, rather than art. And so, they'll publish crap like the Twilight series, The Bridges Of Madison , and Fifty Shades Of Grey instead of something of genuine artistry, because there's a market for crap. So now, I'm considering self publishing on Amazon, just to avoid those business philistines.

I like writing but I don't think I could be a successful fiction writer. I've noticed that a lot of the fiction writing I like to read has body language and facial expressions and voices changing pace and tone. While I sometimes find that stuff educational, I wouldn't know how to include it myself. It seems very important for characterization and such.

I've tried writing a few novels, but none of them got even halfway before I scrapped them.

I actually showed an excerpt from one of those WIP novels to an English teacher I had once. And he apparently liked it. So that's something.

I empathise way too much with this. I am quite fond of coming up with stories after I get a big of inspiration, coming up with an array of profiles of character, but not yet managed to finish a book yet. I especially lose confidence because I end up finding it quite draining to come up with all of the dialogue and fill in the holes of the story I have already planned out, and I don't think my vocabulary is anything special with finding myself often not being able to remember the word that I think will fit and trying google to find it. I feel like what good am of a writer if I cannot even remember words.

My main series I have written up is about 17 chapters, with them averaging a bit over 5,500 words each up to almost 6,000, and I am around half way through the first book. I have it planned out but I just lose confidence. I also have 3 more books planned to follow it, and a second series sequel to follow that up with likely another 4 for next generation time skip, and another season kind of planned for a larger skip within the story world. But I keep losing faith that the story ideas I came up with and thought over a lot could actually be successful rather than being stories I like for myself.

I liked writing for a while, but I kind of sucked when I was in High School when I thought I might be able to plan out what I want to be. I could not come up with any original ideas and in general lacked a creativity that I thought would be needed. After experiencing a lot of different types of stories since, I think that I have come up with some creative spark of interesting and unique stories, but I always doubt because I think successful writers are better than I am. Recently I kind of took up being a dungeon master as a way to stretch story making. Not sure if I could gain confidence.

Edit: In a fit of utter frustration, I made a huge rant about my supposed lack of skills as a fiction writer.

But now that I've calmed down and my muse has finally returned, things are looking much brighter.

My attention span is woefully short, but thankfully I've found a way to write that plays to the way my mind works: I just make all of my chapters exactly 100 words in length. Using this method, I breezed through 500 words tonight, and I'll probably write even more before I go to bed.

So I'm going to change my answer and say that yes, I do think I can be successful at writing fiction, though I do have to use an idiosyncratic method.

(Now that I think about it, having to make each chapter exactly 100 words in length probably appeals to my OCD. I'm loaded on medication designed to treat it but I'm still affected by it, albeit in a more manageable way. I feel like Howie Mandel and I are kindred spirits. )

I actually have the opposite experience. As a teen, I wrote fiction quite a bit and was pretty confident that it was good enough (for a teen writer). My husband read my stories in the early days of our relationship and told me later that they lack imagintion and pretty much suck. Now I don't write fiction anymore, but it's not because of people's opinions. It's ore I can't be inspired.

I've been writing stories since I was about 16. I remember writing my first story for a workshop that focused primarily on short films. My script was not chosen for a full production.

I wrote it to express my frustrations over not fitting in at school and at my mom for not allowing to have a girlfriend at the time. My script was received with mixed reactions.

Beethoven and the Pirate

Two high school students with AS come to terms with themselves when they are assigned to work together for a school project.

I still have the manuscript, but I don't know where it is in my home.