I'm a writer. No, that's an understatement. I'm an obsessed writer. I've been composing novels for the past five years and during that time I have created fifteen manuscripts. Yes, you read that right. Fifteen. Some are completely edited and others are only first drafts, but I have made fifteen novels (they range from 30,000 words to 120,000, respectively.) I've self published two of them (with no success other than excited reviews from other writers when I've posted my work for free) and the rest I've submitted to multiple agents and publishers. I have no idea how many rejections are in my inbox right now but it's not a small number, many of them with encouragements to keep trying.
Now, my first problem. All the books I've written, save for the last novella, can't keep up with what I can do now. The writing I did back then isn't as good as what I can write at the present time for sure. But I'm wondering if I should go back and rewrite some of these novels and try to get them published again. It's a decent idea, but I'm not quite sure if I'm still interested, or even should chance wasting more of my time, fixing these books. One of my good friends, a writer also, says I need to drop all these old manuscripts and go with something completely different.
But there's a problem. I can't find anything I actually want to write about. Every time I try to find inspiration I end up getting bored with the idea. Forcing myself to write isn't helping, as I'll end up with 500 to 30,000 word excerpts that lead nowhere (and if I were to add all these up together, the novel count would probably end up somewhere around 20). All my books are in the YA genre, but some are suggesting I try something different, like erotica. I long to find passion again, but I don't know where to find it. This has been going on for over a year now.
I don't know what to do anymore. The only thing in my life I want to become is an author. This is my only dream. More than anything I want to see that acceptance letter in my inbox, see my books on the shelves, maybe even watch the movie in a theatre someday (it's such a silly, childish dream...but I want it). I feel like I need to write to survive, to breathe, to be. There's not much else to me. But when I wrote all those novels, I had passion, a fire in me that didn't care if I got published so long as I made a story. But that fire has gone out, and I'm tired of writing books no one ever reads. I want to know my work is worth something.
I'm in college right now and I changed my major from Creative Writing to Education, so I don't starve to death later on. I've been an columnist for a newspaper and have had my work in a national magazine more than once. Because of that my loved ones are encouraging me not to give up, but I'm at the end of my rope. Is there a way out of this?