My experience with Wattpad the past two weeks has been..... interesting. I've put up the first three chapters of Crow and gotten over 200 reads and a fist-full of comments, all fairly encouraging and positive. Buoyed by the feedback, I finally got up the nerve to start posting Firechild (you remember Firechild, right? My beloved fantasy novel that I've re-written half a dozen times over the past 16 years that I was trying to finish last year before my daughter killed my laptop?) I'm hoping getting feedback on it will motivate me to get back to writing it.
If you're curious about the infamous Firechild, here's a link to the Wattpad: Firechild
But, oh man, Wattpad! As if I needed another social media outlet to obsess my brain with. I find myself refreshing my profile page over and over and over, watching obsessively for reads, comments and votes. It's certainly dangerous. On the positive side, I've started connecting with other writers and gained a few new readers. I've also found a dozen or so books by other authors that I want to read (when I can find the time!) I've even had people message me, asking when I'd be posting more because they couldn't wait to read the next chapter! I can't even express what an ego boost that was! Sometimes, when you spend so much time in your own head, it seems kind of unreal that other people could love it as much as you do - when it actually happens, WOW! Waking up and turning my computer on in the morning to find messages like that certainly drives me to get back to writing. On that point, Wattpad is an amazing motivator.
At the same time, my editing has slowed to a crawl, but that's not Wattpad's fault. I've gotten to that point during editing where I've just been in the story too much for too long and I hate all my characters and want to re-write the first chapter and kill them all off violently on the first page. Truthfully, I know this is caused by me not giving the story enough space between the first draft and the edits. I'm now two-thirds of the way through the major edits but I'm having a really hard time bringing myself back to it each day - dreading it more and more even while knowing my deadline is speeding closer and closer - which of course just stresses me out and makes me resent the book even more. I've been seriously contemplating pushing the publishing deadline back and working on something else - because, of course, I'm eager to get started on another story I've been kicking around in my head for months and finding constant inspiration for it, even though I know I should finish Crow first.
I haven't settled on pushing the publication date back, yet, as I'm still trying to keep my word and have it finished on time, so I suppose this is just a warning - it MAY end up happening if I can't get it together in time. I really want to make sure the book is as polished as I can make it and not only do I still have to finish the major editing, I have to do another read through to clean up anything I may have missed AND I still have to format the book. If you've noticed the little countdown going on in the right sidebar, I've only got about two weeks left to finish.
With that said, I'm going to get back to work.
Thanks for reading.
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