It was a dreary day on December 2nd 2012. I wasn't doing much, just been out to a nice country home transformed into a Christmas masterpiece... Scratch that... I don't live in a country home. I live on the outskirts of a city in a big neighbourhood with noisy traffic, one bus ride away from all of the shops. It's not London but somewhere in the UK which I like living in because of all of the historical attractions and architecture. It was after going to this country home that I brought up the site Wattpad to my mum.
Just a month prior to me bringing up the Wattpad site, my teen magazine had arrived in the letterbox one morning waiting to be read. I still read that magazine now even though I'm older and spend more time reading books and writing stories. I guess the magazine that I read helps me to take my mind off things. One article caught my eye: Abigail Gibbs with her experience being an online writer on the site Wattpad. She was fifteen when she became well known writing the book Dinner With A Vampire (Trust me, it may look like another Twilight copy) but for someone like me who reads more contemporary novels, I was blown away. It took me a lot of courage to sum up the truth to my parents that I wanted to take my writing seriously and on that December day, my mum sat down with me at the computer and helped me to make an account. That account is still there three years on.
Just an hour after creating that account and customizing it the way I liked it, a message popped up in my mum's emails. It was my first ever Wattpad notification from another user welcoming me to the site. It was then I knew, that Wattpad would become part of my extended family.
I started to post some writing. First, it was Poetry. On good days, I can write poems in less than five minutes. While still at school, I would set my alarm for a earlier time so that I could write something before I had to dash off in the car for the school day. This allowed me to express my thoughts away from anyone else. I originally published my poetry as separate works. Since of December 2015, I've written and published on my Wattpad profile a total of over 120 poems that I have now combined into books to make it easier for readers to access. I was obsessed with poetry but it was my first main story that really took off.
I loved book series like The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot so I was inspired after having a dream one night and reading the series back to back to write a fictional diary about a girl named Chelsea who lived in a really grand house with her younger sisters and parents. Even though the family were really well off, they also did their bit for the community and all of the kids attended normal state schools. I had plans to write 12 books, one for each month but I only completed the month of January when other projects plus school related matters got in the way. I don't have plans to return to that series.
Lots of readers started to comment saying that even though my spelling and grammar were a bit strange which I understood perfectly considering I have never been able to spell well (still grateful that spell checker exists on a computer!) They loved my ideas and said that I should write something new. But, there was a problem.
With the amount of Poetry on that account, I had the fear that my stories would get buried under my poems so I decided to make a second account. A decision that was to pay off a few years later. But at the time, I was still fairly unknown so I had nothing to lose. I made my second account in May 2013 and it is still going strong today. I log in every day and chat to my friends and go on the forums and help other users with their stories because since joining, I've become more confident chatting to people.
I started quite an ambitious work called Across The Pond. Set in this fantasy world called Aurora, it was made up of two gangs who used to be friends but over the dark, stormy clouds that brewed over the kingdom, the two gangs had moved away and each occupied land by this huge pond. Well, I think it's more of a river rather than a pond but the term was aiming to be based on the term describing the USA and the UK on opposite sides of the Atlantic. It was going OK, I wrote 3 chapters until a troll got me and started to say that I shouldn't be a writer and my writing basically sucked. That troll had the nerve to post that publicly on my story. I took the decision to remove the story and delete it completely which is something that I have regretted but even though I love reading Fantasy novels, it was obvious that I couldn't write anything like that.
After scrapping Across The Pond, I did go on to complete my first full-length novel Fizzy Like Cola just a few months later. It was a teen fiction love story about... possibly one of the biggest clichés on Wattpad... good girl, bad boy. Yep, what was I thinking?
I was on the right track after that, I could finally say to myself, "Look Scarlett, you completed a novel!" To date, it has had over 5,000 reads on Wattpad and the editing looking back on it now as I write this is terrible but I've learnt a lot of writing skills since then. My writing I feel after joining Wattpad has become more mature but I still leave room for the fun stuff! The title came from after drinking a glass of Coca-Cola at a restaurant. No surprise there!
Fizzy Like Cola did however boost my readership and this year, my goal is to re-write the story, make it longer, cleaner and more interesting with a variety of plot twists.
Since 2013, I started a novel called The Forgotten Girl which I posted but again... people said that I should change things which I have but with writers block and just nerves after what happened over the Across The Pond scenario, I've never been able to finish that novel. I would like to since I started to write it during some rough times in my life but I am still waiting for the day when I can put the tick next to it to mark it complete.
Over the Christmas holidays of 2013-2014, I started another story called You and Me which turned into a whirlwind of a ride. The story once again is a teen love story but this time told uniquely in letter form. No bad boy stuff here! When I completed it on New Year's Day 2014, I was thrilled. Another story to be happy about. The reads slowly picked up and by the summer of the same year after I left school, I had around 2,500 reads. But that wasn't due to the story just sitting around. By now, I was more than serious about my writing and so, I was going to work hard to get myself known on the Wattpad world.
Becoming active on the threads and forums really helped. People knew my username and would send me messages asking for assistance around the site. I liked to help users who were struggling with writers block the most, because I went through that myself and those looking for help with the story title or the blurb, what genre their story fitted into since on Wattpad, you can only put a story in one genre so for a writer who has a teen mystery story, two genres, only one choice.
I took part in lots of book interviews run by other users on the site and talked about my writing and how I found Wattpad through the magazine. It enabled me to connect with more readers and authors as the follows increased. I started to enter You and Me mainly just for fun so it was the shock of my life when I learnt that I won a competition with it! I then entered another competition with my story and walked away with three awards including Best Overall story.
What I was I doing in the meantime? Slumping. I was so exhausted after finishing my GCSEs at High School and all of the bullying that I had been through even up to the few weeks just before my first exams. I didn't pass everything but I did get through them which my family were proud of. I had plans to work on projects but being the slumping sloth I was (and sometimes still am if I'm not well or feeling down) I didn't start any of them. Summer 2014 was a disaster for my new projects but a success at the same time as You and Me started to get noticed.
Starting College was a big deal, I had chances to write but sadly, I just didn't take them. My closet followers on Wattpad were very understanding and let me concentrate on my education over the writing.
2015 started off sour but still You and Me continued to be picked up by new readers but then came a thread post that changed everything. How to get your story Featured on the Wattpad website. Featured is an exclusive list made up of stories selected by the Wattpad team that are unique and would leave an impact with readers and other writers on the site. I had a completed story, a decent following, what could go wrong?
I submitted and waited, waited and waited then after ten weeks of waiting travelling home on the bus after a day at College, a message popped up on my phone, an email from Wattpad. I read it and re-read it and almost screamed with delight in front of some very elderly passengers that were sitting a few seats in front of me. My story had been selected! I was thrilled as heck and called mum to let her know, dad let me have some extra dessert to celebrate at dinner.
My story didn't get Featured straight away. Although Wattpad loved the premise, they told me that parts of it needed to be cleaner and replaced and that was thanks to one user who took two hours out of her time to critique my whole story, not just the first chapter that most users do, the WHOLE STORY. And her points really were correct, I took some advice from another user and didn't look at my story for a month since it was quite soon after I had been along and tidied a couple of things out. Then, I cleaned it, rewrote parts, removed parts and messaged them hoping for the green light.
Not quite.
There was another problem. 942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjJQeXRvcDU
The cover's colours were too dark.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡROkf20g81i
I let out a small frustrated sigh. I was going to have to find a new book cover to replace the one that had won an award for Best Cover in a competition. So, I decided to host a contest to see who could design the best cover. I had over 20 entries, some multiple covers entered by designers who were desperate to get themselves known as designers and writers. After a lot of thinking, I chose one and once again, messaged Wattpad with the results. The user I picked was incredibly thrilled and since then, her story reads and follows have jumped simply because of one cover: The one for my story. I'm so happy for her.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOasxT16q8y
I got the green light after a few days wait. The story was added and what happened was just astonishing.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ7rOxl1oIe
The day before my story got Featured, it had just 4,500 reads. 24 hours later, it had nearly 15,000 reads. The comments started to flood in, my message board was spammed with messages from new readers, notifications came in huge numbers all at once. Right now, my story stands at 363,000 reads after just four months of being on the Featured list. It's crazy. Looking at the demographics that Wattpad have installed for each story, I have readers from over 140 countries on You and Me. The most dominate being the USA, Australia, The Philippines and my home country the UK.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeiediMnOem
The positives have been great, getting recognised not just on Wattpad but my other social medias connected to my accounts. At one point, some twitter users started to tweet about my story and even more buzz picked up. I created a Facebook page for my readers and now have over 900 friends on there, some authors that have scored publishing deals after being discovered through Wattpad. I've received comments of people sitting in lessons reading my story on their phone, computer or whatever gadget they are using, readers reading at 3am in the morning, readers saying that I made them cry. In a good way mind you, I'm not a nasty person.
But obviously, there has to be a catch. Yep. There's a catch.
Even after putting it loud and clear on my message board, I still get messaged reading requests. Don't get me wrong, I love to help Undiscovered authors out but I have to hold down my ridiculous attempt at a social life, education, family, other writing projects. I have received hate on my stories and also directed towards me personally. Someone called me selfish but luckily, my followers were able to get that person to see straight.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHyNnCgJiYH
I think the worst comment that I've ever had was being called a bad person by another user on Wattpad because I wrote too much. At that point, I had to admit there were stories on my profile that I hadn't got round to starting because of various other things happening but the way that user worded it made me delete 70+ stories of mine because I was that upset.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZujZzPfnm0
I still have doubts as to whether I should write new stories all the time, my main focus at the moment on my Wattpad profile is finishing up all of the stories that are still there that are like halfway through but not done yet. It's slowly but surely coming along just fine.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlDeylVdg8j
On Wattpad, I have run my own contests however I had to cancel one I ran back in 2014 due to lack of judges and just... Commitment from my end because I was doing GCSEs then so not a good editor. I've done co-writing but when I tried it, I just felt way too far out of my comfort zone. I'm still looking for that perfect person to try and co-write with but so far, I haven't found them. I also have edited stories but received hate messages from some of my clients plus their refusal from some of them to put up the new edited chapters for them. I've only got back into it quite recently but I'm still nervous about it.
I guess I put a lot of pressure on myself, of course I do. When I told someone on Wattpad that I doubted my abilities, she said, "Why are you writing? As a writer, you need to have thick skin!" She has a point but no-one online knows about my real-life background.
One day, they'll know.
So... Is Wattpad all doom and gloom? No it's not! I've made some great friends on there, read some fantastic stories, have been able to connect with readers and followers from around the world and get recognised for my writing. My biggest dream is to win a Watty award. I entered for the 2015 one but sadly didn't win anything. I follow a bunch of great people including those who are published and I try and buy their stories to support them. One such one I got for Christmas was My Life With The Walter Boys by Ali Novak. I can't wait to get her next book.942Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYfscf0RQOY
Finding something positive to be addicted to is great. I'm addicted to books and reading so finishing somewhere that you can do that for free? Well, I'm satisfied.
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