There is nothing harder for a writer than to write about themselves...

Or that's what I think because writing this piece has turned out to be tougher than I thought. It's taken a lot of trial and error to get to a draft which I feel adequately communicates my love-hate relationship with Wattpad.

At its most basic form, Wattpad is a platform to express and create. I can put out my grammatically flawed, typo-filled chapters out for the world to see and there will be people who enjoy it.

I started writing on Wattpad when I was 16. Before that I'd done a bit of writing for a story I had with no particular plot beyond 'girl grows wings'

Of course, that's the plot of 'Human Untouched' to a certain shallow extent but that story was world's apart.

'Ch.I.P.' wasn't my first attempt at writing and publishing on Wattpad. I used to write on a different account under my real name. It was a story inspired by the game 'Beyond: Two Souls' about beings from another dimension. No cover, no proper tile or summary- it went nowhere but in the trashcan. I didn't really like it, neither did my friends and definitely not the people on Wattpad. I trashed it thinking that it's best for me to just stick to reading as it seemed like I couldn't write for shit.

I only started writing 'Ch.I.P.' a year later on yet another account. This one- SydCarv. 'Ch.I.P.' didn't blow up either but I had fun writing it. It had no plot in the beginning. It flowed on its own will. I would start typing and whatever would come out would just be the next chapter to be uploaded. It's a mish-mash, hodge-podge of way too many characters, way too many typos, random unconnected scenes, romance, mystery, adventure and a lot more.

While I'm embarrassed about this book, I still love it. It's a like the middle child of everything I've written even though it's the first thing I (officially) wrote.

Elementalists' was my second book and I am very proud of it. It's a perfect teen action-romance according to me... and I just gave my baby away.

Elementalists' started out as a birthday gift for a friend I'd thought up the original story with. We've drifted apart now but we do talk sometimes. I don't know if she read it, I don't know if she even kept up with it. At one point, it stopped being about her. It was all about me, my characters and the readers.

It was an idea I didn't really put to paper for a while. I hesitated with doing that because I didn't really have a plot for that either. It's now one of my most read books, even if it's not on the platform anymore.

FicFun approached me in my DMs out of the blue one day. They offer an upfront payment to writers for placing the book on their platform, promising continuous payment and more exposure. While they did pay up, I was given none of the other things they mentioned. There was no marketing for my book from their end, and as far as I can see, it's not behind a paywall on their app. I gave my baby away, and now I'm locked into a 3 year contract with an erotica demon subsidiary of FicFun called 'Dreame'.

I highly regret signing the contract for it. My gut had been telling me no, but I decided to go for it because it was not only the first time I was getting paid, it was the first time I was getting paid for my writing. It meant my writing was recognised well enough for it to be of interest to someone in a monetary manner. It was mind-blowing. It was heady. It was exciting.

Until very recently, when it wasn't.

It was only when I was coming up on the one year anniversary of signing up with Dreame that I found out that my book didn't have paywalls on it. I wasn't receiving payments from them because they hadn't bothered to have anyone pay for my book. Now they have a manuscript of one of the best things I've ever written, and two more years on the contract with it. I'm going to take my book back so fast once the contract is over that they'll have whiplash. Two years seems like a long time, but it's not. I'll get them back. I'll get them all back.

Elementalists' ends in a fairy tail kind of way. Girl finally gets to be with guy, everything seems fine for a short while. I left it an open ending in case I decided to get back to the story someday. There's a lot of the world yet to be explored, several paths the story has yet to go down, several hoops I have to make my characters jump through. And yes, we do derive sadistic pleasure from readers reactions to those scenes.

Sometime in the middle of writing Elementalists', I got the idea for a new book. It was called 'Human Untouched', there's a sequel and the ending calls for a trilogy. So keep your eyes peeled in the future!

'Human Untouched' (HU) was the first fully plotted out book I started writing. I had the characters down, the flow down, the events down, and had finally established a writing style after four years of being on Wattpad. I was excited to begin.

The first thing was the cover. A friend volunteered to make it for me after I explained the pains of starting a new book to her. The plot had been a hit with the other friends I'd explained it to. The title was a bit of a dice roll as I didn't really think 'Angel of Death' would go down that well.

I wanted the best for this. I wanted nothing but the best things I could achieve at the time for this book. And I got it.

The summary: perfect.
The cover: perfect.
The story: perfect.
The reception: mind-blowing.

I started out with uploading the first five chapters on the same day. Chapters I'd obsessively read and reread over the week before uploading to get perfect.

I normally go to sleep after uploading chapters. It's usually midnight or so in my timezone when I upload so I'm usually late to bed because I'm writing. When I woke up, the numbers were nuts- almost 500 reads. Within a week we'd cracked 1K as I was uploading once every three days at the time. Two weeks later, I was contacted by Wattpad upon being featured in Wattpad's Action List. And 10 months into writing the book, I hit burnout.

It was bound to happen. I'd been writing almost nonstop for years. There had never been an upload schedule for Ch.I.P., created my once-every-three-days schedule for Elementalists' in a bid to finish it, continued it for HU, and finally crashed.

Around October 2018 was when it happened. I started losing motivation to write. The read, votes, comments didn't motivate me either at that point. I realised what was going on but was in denial up until my finals happened in October. Figured it was a long break I needed. The long break turned into a very long break. I barely started writing again.

My schedule was broken. I was planning to finish HU within a year, or atleast before the new year started. I managed to push through the first few months of 2019, but in March I slowed down and stopped. With just a few chapters left to the end of the book, I ran out of steam. I'd been running on fumes anyway, and I finally gave up.

Around that same time I was contacted by Wattpad to be a part of their upcoming Paid Stories Program. It felt like a helping hand pulling me up after days of crawling in the dark. But it couldn't have come at a worse time. Finals were about to begin again, my second of year of college was getting over.

In the middle of studying, I started up the correspondence with Wattpad, apologising in each email for the long gap between my replies. Long story short, it took me about 3 months to finalise the deal with Wattpad for HU and it's sequel. But the book was still incomplete. I still had to finish the second book.

My readers finally pushed me through it.

I keep mentioning the regular voters and readers and commenters through this piece because I'm truly grateful to them. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been able to finish HU before it went behind a paywall.

Since then, it's been great. I've met more writers. I've gotten great writing tips. One of my short stories went up in a Halloween horror anthology which was contributed to by other Paid Story writers as well.

I had help from Wattpad for the creation of a cover for 'Closing Time' (CT) as well. More specifically, rentachi made the best covers. The new covers for HU, it's sequel, and CT. Love the covers, love her work, go check her out- she's amazing.

CT has been a bit of a start and stop. Lots of problems when I started writing it, mainly because I was in the middle of assignment season and not far out from finals. Again. I know it's almost like these exams are periodically set up to screw up your life for a month or so. What a pain.

Had to stop. Found some trouble restarting again. Burnout, or whatever it is by this point, is still kicking my ass. All I know is I need to push through it, because I have several more ideas, more stories, more of my writing to put out there.

The quality of my work varies a lot. Some chapters are chock-full of typos and mistakes, some are perfect. I'm only one person. I handle everything on my own and I'm proud of how far I've come. It's been a long five years of Wattpad, yet it feels like it's flown by in a snap. Time works weird.

Now, for some rapid fire questions that I should probably take care of a writer.

Inspiration?
This should explain it.

Motivation?
Read the entire thing again you've failed this quiz.

Joy?
None. There is only suffering.

Life?
That bitch dropped off some very expensive lemons at my door.

Future?
Questionable. Climate change is real.

Social media?
Twitter: SCarvahall
IG: sydcarv for my writer/personals xtrachezzyart for my art stuff.
(I post Wattpad shit on my stories hmu)

Spoilers?
Someone always dies.

Face reveal?
Follow my IG and Twitter.

How to hit it big on Wattpad?
Patience and practice.

That should explain most of what I do and most of what I've done.

Being a Wattpad writer is one of the biggest achievements in my life. I am so grateful to them for giving me a chance and making me a part of the PaidStories and the WattpadStars Programs. There's a lot of people who dealt with me and my writing, and I wouldn't be here without them.

Thank you for reading this piece! Hope you enjoyed it! If you have any questions, comment, post on my Wall or DM me!