11/25/2019

Maple (d_s_t_e ) here to make an announcement that I'm going to be taking a long break from the GRA.

Most of you probably know that I've been planning to leave Wattpad for a long time and that I was only sticking around to finish up a few commitments, this year's PWA being one of them. I hadn't been sure of what was going to happen with the GRA until recently, though. I wasn't sure if I was going to continue being the admin while simply double posting on the blog and starting to review fanfics from other sites in order to avoid drawing people to Wattpad (for the reason I wouldn't want to draw people to Wattpad, see my random book post called Why I'm Transitioning Away from Wattpad Slowly) or if the blog was going to work out so well that I would move the GRA off Wattpad completely.

The answer, at least for now, is neither. Instead, I'm giving control of the club to Gremlin.

It's not exactly a secret that a lot of people have been very critical of the PWA and the GRA lately. And not just critical of these groups but in many cases specifically critical of the people running them. There are people who don't like what I'm doing or how I'm doing it or just don't like me as a person apparently. There's talk of standards being too high and too much criticism being placed on stories like the ones the GRA reviews. Talk of me being intimidating, of scaring younger or inexperienced writers away, of not being friendly enough or not having enough friends in the community.

To me, it all seems to come down to the same thing. It seems like a significant portion of the community either doesn't want constructive criticism being posted anymore or doesn't want a person like me to be the one doing it. It seems like they keep stressing that Wattpad is supposed to be a place for teenagers, by which they seem to mean young and inexperienced writers who don't want to take any of this too seriously.

In the past, I had always thought that the GRA ran things in a way that would allow everyone to live in harmony. The writers who didn't want to take things seriously could simply leave the GRA alone by not asking for any services, and the GRA would leave them alone by never making a review an author didn't want. I thought that there could be a community of people who did whatever they wanted on the site and a community of people who wanted to work hard at improving their writing. 

But these recent criticisms suggest that's just not working. It seems like there are people who feel threatened by the GRA or by me personally. People who fall into that community of wanting to just have fun.

If what these people are saying is correct, it's basically unquestionable that I should step down from my position. I can't turn back the clock on my life to become a teenager with fewer writing skills and less knowledge to unintentionally intimidate people with. I'm not going to suddenly start lying and saying that I think a story is perfect when I have the writing knowledge to see how it could be improved. And I certainly can't become a different person who is more likeable and less introverted and has more things in common with the people I'm supposed to be making friends with. The only way to stop causing problems is to leave.

And if what these people are saying is incorrect, it doesn't change the fact that people are saying it. Even if I'm doing some amount of good with the reviews I write and help make happen, it's simply not enough to make up for the toll that it's been taking on me. Not when I could be doing good things for others that would help my mental and emotional health instead of hurting it.

So I'm taking a break. A break in order to take care of myself, to focus on my own writing and maybe some new projects off of Wattpad. And at some point I'll make a final decision about whether I'm coming back or not. But for now I'm leaving the GRA in Gremlin's hands. I'm sure he'll do a great job with it.

* Note: The date at the top is correct. I wrote this at the end of November and told Gremlin he could post it whenever he was ready. I was thinking he would appreciate having few days to consider the situation before this announcement was made. When I last spoke to him a few days ago, he said that he's been too busy, but, given how much time has passed already, I thought it was about time people found out what's been going on with the account. Yes, I'm still on break. No, I still don't know when I'll be back. The rest is up to Gremlin.