Shifting was bad, replaced the cables and now no neutral

[sam c.]

Last spring, I took the car out of winter storage and almost immediately lost reverse. Everything shifted fine and then all of a sudden the shifter would not go into reverse. I put the car back into storage and figured I'd deal later. Well, now I'm seeing what I can do with it...
Drive it around for the last week to knock the cobwebs out of it, the shifting in general was not great - very stiff, almost like it was just barely going into any of the gears. I replaced the rear linkages because they were starting to bend and distort. Replacing the linkages had no effect.
I just got done replacing the cables and now the car will not go into neutral (trying to shift it by hand back at the transmission) so I can't set the new cables. Does anyone have any thoughts?
*99 Base with a short throw shifter, 150k miles. I replaced the clutch and flywheel about 30k miles ago