Nashville can eat you up. Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a small town. I had the number one song in the nation. I saw things I could not believe. It's that way today.
Writing is a craft.
If you just put your feelings down on paper you have a poem. There has to be discipline and learning. Sure you can be lucky, it happened to me. But today you really need to learn the craft. You need to learn to take your heart-felt ideas and put them together where a guy driving to work can sing them with you.