1. Which entry are you excited about the most for PWA 2019?

Wow, what a terribly worded question. My interpretation of this was that I should say which entry I'm most excited to read, but it seems like everyone else has took it to mean which entry you're most excited to see how it performs. I guess I'll answer both questions.

The book that I'm most excited to read is The Leader by blue___22. Now, the last book I read by Blue, I was, uh, rather critical of. I had some very strong opinions about it and voiced my lack of fondness for the book. However, that was quite a while ago now and I know that the author has the potential to write really well, so this actually makes me really excited to see what Blue has managed to come up with and any improvements that have been made.

As for the one I'm excited to see how it performs... I mean, I guess it's my own oneshot. I'd be lying if I said anything else.

2. What is your favourite thing about the PWA?

I like that the PWA rewards all kinds of books and all kinds of authors, regardless of popularity. I just like the idea that someone with 2 followers and 3 reads could topple someone with 1000 followers and 300000 reads. The most popular Pokémon books on Wattpad, generally speaking, aren't that great, and they certainly tend to be unoriginal. What the PWA allows is for the hidden gems to be discovered. It gives the opportunity for talented writers to be noticed, and for their interesting and unique ideas their due time in the spotlight. That's a really cool concept.

3. What is your least favourite thing about the PWA?

Ok, here we go.

The competitive aspect of the PWA is by far and away the worst thing about it. And I don't mean the fact that it's a competition. I love competition. I live and breathe competition. I love the fact that there is a winner (multiple, in fact). Trouble is, for there to be a winner, there have to be many "losers".

And that's totally fine, that's the nature of competition. If somebody wins, someone else has to lose. Apparently, some people don't understand this. Some people seem to enter the PWA, not with the hope of winning, not with the goal of winning, but with the expectation of winning and that is such a horrible, horrible mindset. It's okay to dream of winning something and it's okay to try your hardest to win something, but you should never, ever outright expect to win something.

It's that level of expectation which causes a lot of hurt because that expectation quickly develops into entitlement. When you come in the top 5, there's no sense of achievement because you thought you were entitled to more, you thought you deserved the number 1 spot. And then come the excuses and accusations and it's just really sad to watch from an outsiders perspective.

The other issue that competition breeds is a need for perfectionism. Sometimes you set your goals so high that it becomes motivated more by fear than anything else. You become so scared of not winning that all of a sudden, the book you're working on has to be perfect, and anything less than perfect won't do because anything less than perfect won't be good enough to win. All that fear does is hold people back and stop them from truly expressing themselves through their work, and that's really sad to see.

I understand that all of these things just come with competition and there's not much avoiding it. It's just really frustrating when I see things like this come up over and over again. There's so much more to competition than just winning, I just wish that everyone could see it that way.