Amen! I feel such a kinship with anyone trying to make a living at a creative profession. Quite a few in my inner circle are creatives because we understand one another and the struggles. It's really f*cking hard work. Not merely the act of writing but then having to sell it. It will wear you down if you let it but it also has the potential to polish you like a diamond. You have to be relentless and look at life as a constant learning process.
I think in this next decade or so creatives will have another (maybe one final?) golden age. AI programs can write non-fiction pretty convincingly now but they have a ways to go before than can master really good fiction. AI will master it eventually but so far the attempts have been pretty lackluster.
God, that's a frightening concept. Seems to me art is one of the main things that makes us human, you know? The ability to write a poem or a story, to paint a picture, to create something that wasn't there before...once that goes also, what will humans do?
Same here, it's one of the things I like about this platform - it helps one connect to other creatives who understand the "struggle". As you say, it can be extremely rewarding as well...