why bother?

I am part of a writers' forum; we post our writings to be critiqued and critique each other's work. A good exercise, and a nice place to post writings. But it seems almost incestuous. Writers, reading writers and commenting on writers. Nobody else reads the words.

Yesterday, I received a rejection letter in the mail from another publisher. We writers quickly loose count of those letters. We receive lots of them and each one hurts. I am not supposed to write the editor and say, "eat shit and die!" but am supposed to take the rejection philosophically. I'll keep trying, but it raises the question, why?

The only people, apparently, who read my words are those who also like to write. some of that group are published, some are wannabes.

But, i continue to write. Why?

beats me.