I miss just writing. I miss it so much it is like an ache in my stomach. At the conclusion of the first week of crowdfunding I thought I would take a moment to reflect on what this journey has so far been like, and in two words – it’s shit. I can not honestly thing of anything I hate more than I hate this.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, money is one of the worst things to try and get out of people, even if they are getting something in return. People don’t like to part with it, and I don’t blame them. I have none. Zip. Zero. I am the poorest writer since JK Rowling couldn’t afford to buy coffee, in fact it is a good thing I don’t drink coffee because I couldn’t afford it if I did.

Secondly, I feel like I am talking to brick walls, or a void, shouting myself hoarse into a vacuum. I’ve read all the tips for successful crowdfunding, but all in all it’s a load of bull. You can set up a great project and do all the right things, but it isn’t any guarantee of success. You send out press releases – no one writes back. You send out emails – no one writes back. You feel like the loneliest asshole in the world as you post your updates on Facebook and throw your tweets into the roaring sea of hundreds and thousands of other tweets and posts and please help me fund my ‘blah’.

I am a writer. Before everything, I am a writer. I am not an entrepreneur, I am not a marketing professional, and I sure as hell am not a robot, and for a writer the internet is a very dangerous place. We take so much of our self-esteem from our work, because we are so obsessive in the production of it, that the sometimes unthinking assholery (now a word, I totally just called it) of people is like a knife to the heart and the pain lingers a long time after the memory of all the good words have faded.

I hate selling myself. I hate twitter. I hate sending out email after email and getting nothing back. It is like applying for a job. You send our resume after resume, cover letter after cover letter, you call people, you refresh job sites, you sit on your own in a corner and cry because the world doesn’t want you after all, and after that you somehow have to dig yourself out and remind yourself that you have to believe, and by god that is the hardest thing I ever have to tell myself, the hardest thing there is in the whole world to believe in – harder than believing in ghosts, harder than believing that your mailman is an alien in disguise, harder than believing that Fifth Shades of Grey is an amazing literary masterpiece.

The hardest thing there is to believe in, is me.

Never ever ever will I do this again, unless I develop a desire to stress myself into an early grave.