I don't think you'll find any particularly wise advice in this chapter. Instead, this is more a recount of my experiences, because I think by showing my experiences, you'll be able to relate. If at the end of the day, even a single person who reads this realizes they've been through something similar, and feel relieved that they're not the only one, then I feel this chapter has done its job.

Many of the readers who follow me do so mostly because of Wattpad 101. In fact, I'd go so far to say that most people follow me because of 1 specific chapter of Wattpad 101. That chapter is "How Long should my chapter be?" As I understand it, when this particular question is asked on google, my wattpad chapter pops up on top of the menu, and I think that's brought more people to my book than anything else I have written.

It certainly wasn't the first chapter I've written, but considering it has 3 times the views, a hundred more stars, and 200 more comments than the first chapter of this book, it should become clear just how influential the 22nd finished chapter in my book happened to be. I lucked out and just happened to hit the right phrasing to achieve google gold.

However, the thing that brought my account from a nobody to a nobody with 1200 followers didn't start with Wattpad 101 at all. It actually spawned from a oneshot fiction I wrote called Vampire's Kiss. It was intended to be a short story aimed at entering the Wattys, but that year they decided to redefine the short story to something with about 6 times the amount of words I was expecting, and so that never happened.

But... through some strange luck, the story started getting REALLY popular and *gasp* featured! I did what people do when you strike gold. You dig in. I started writing chapters of Vampire's Kiss, turning a one-shot into a complex story with various characters. However, the story was derivative, romantic drivel... and I had no fun writing it. So even though the story exploded with reads, follows, and stars... after about 10 chapters I had enough and couldn't keep going on with a story that wasn't fun to write.

Thus, I axed the story and returned it back to its oneshot roots, and my goldmine story was lost to the ravages of time.

Around this time, I also was quite prevalent in the Wattpad forums, and thus I created the Mission Impossible Club. It was a club that took 20+ volunteer writers, created a chapter to chapter script, and got each writer to write one chapter of a story. The first story generated a lot of excitement. The second one was less. And by the third one I couldn't get anyone barking.

It was a hard job, but I managed to get 2 completed novels from it. You can still find them on wattpad if you search mission impossible. I've thought about closing out that account and just bringing them over to my profile, but I never felt like the work was really "mine".

The biggest thing that came out of the Mission Impossible club, however, was Wattpad 101. That's write. After shoveling through 20-30 writers unedited stories and trying to turn what they wrote into something coherent, I started writing this guide as a resource both for myself and for other writers. In fact, the seven sins of wattpad and writing dialogue where the first two chapters I ever wrote for MI long before they became Wattpad 101 chapters... and they did NOT go over well. Apparently, my authors got "offended" when I tried to give them advice on what I felt they were doing wrong.

Either way, that lead to Hawtness. My first "completed" book and the only other one in my profile that seems to have any real presence.

The book was written because it was fun to write. Unlike Vampire's Kiss, I enjoyed the satire and the humor. I also got about 2-3 people who commented on every chapter, and that, more than anything, made my ability to go through and complete Hawtness a reality.

When I finally finished it, my first complete story, nearly 150,000 words long, I felt so good! However, there were two side effects. The first was the disappointment at a completely lackluster community response. I had the impression that my final chapter would explode with comments as people who had remained silent for the entire book finally gave their appreciation. I figured that, even if they remained silent, at the very least they'd say something in the last chapter, right? Alas, that didn't come to be.

I received no sudden influx of commenters, despite I knew people to be reading it. And my 3 steady commenters, the ones that I trusted the most? They wrote something saying they wished I wrote more, but ultimately nothing about the experience as a whole. Overall, Hawtness didn't reach completion with a bang... but a slow simmer.

And that simmer continues to this day. I still get stars on the book. Occasionally it makes it on the top list for humor. Since I'm not releasing chapters it certainly doesn't go anywhere near first, But over time the final chapter of the book has gained over 100 stars and 75 comments.

However, there was a problem with hitting the slow simmer. I was too used to the high! I missed the period in which people were staring and commenting and telling me how much they wanted to read more!

So... in comes Hawtness 1.5. Now, Hawtness was never really intended to be a multibook series. The ending was always intended to riff other stories, and the fact she chooses no one in a harem story, declaring herself her own person who can't be defined by what boy she dates IS the point of hawtness. I think it went over a lot of people's heads there, but Hawtness was a satire of wish fulfillment stories, not a wish fulfillment story itself. Throughout the story she grew after each scenario from someone who was controlled by her environment and being saved by everyone to, well, pretty much an action hero.

But alas... like with Vampire's Kiss... people wanted MOAR, and high on the rush, I lept into Hawtness 1.5. Strangely, despite writing chapters for Hawtness 1.5... people would still end Hawtness with comments like "I wish there was more." Readers apparently wanted more... but were too lazy to click the one link to see if there was more. After a few rocky chapters, the reader/star/comment drop off was severe, and I lost all of my cheerleeders that brought me through Hawtness. Suddenly, I'm releasing a chapter of Hawtness... and no one is bothering to comment.

Although I started Hawtness 1.5 in 2014... I only finished it today. That's right. The last chapter was put up today. This isn't because it was a 500-chapter book, by the way. I only wrote 18 chapters, and most of these were typically shorter than the same chapters in Hawtness. The problem was reader dropoff. It was interest. It was the lack of any true motivation to finish.

Last month, about 12 chapters in, I vowed to myself I'd finish it, and I accomplished the feat. I'll leave it up to you guys whether I had to dip in quality to achieve it, but even though this had been a book stuck in hiatus hell, I still thought the same thing I thought when I finished Hawtness. I figured a bunch of people who had been waiting forever to finish this story would see it finished, race to read it, and then give their comments and stars.

Of course, once again, this isn't what happened. Instead, it just becomes another finished story. Should I write Hawtness 2? There are people that tell me they want it. But those same people are the ones who then don't star, don't comment, and don't support you when you're actually doing the writing! You know... when you need it the most?

And it's not like the "fans" are completely silent. Last month, as I was swearing to finish Hawtness, I also officially announced that I probably will NOT be writing Hawtness 2. As I put it, I'd need to start receiving some kind of monetary reward before I'd consider continuing the story. This was met with many comments about how sad people are to see Hawtness end. They're happy to mention how sad they are to see it go, but they wouldn't even need to see it go if they spend that same amount of time making comments in the first place!

This is a common problem I have as well. In the excitement of creating something, I always go overboard and suddenly my novel becomes a trilogy. Vampire's Kiss, had I written it, was planned for a Trilogy. Time and Place, if I every write it, is only 1 of 5 books. Hawtness, as I imagined it, is 3 books with 1.5 being just an extra. Another one of my finished books, which isn't on wattpad, also got turned into a trilogy when I originally intended it to be one single book.

And I don't really know what to do about it either. Some stories could be longer. There was certainly arcs and content that got cut from the initially story. I certainly can develop characters further, creater richer backstories, and put them through new adventures. So when is enough, enough? I've had a habit recently of reading a lot of Chinese and Korean webnovels, and some of these regularly reach 300+ chapters. When is excessive excessive, and where do you draw a line, both in what you decide to sell and what you decide to write? I'm not telling you an answer here, I'm legitimately asking.

Meanwhile, I've completed 3 books and I haven't made much off of any of them. That's not entirely true. I have a patreon account where patrons (you guys) can throw me a couple of bucks every month. I actually get paid about $40 a month to write. This is tied to my blog elementalcobalt.wordpress.com which is linked in my profile.

And so, all of that brings you to the present. I could, of course, try to self-publish these books. Or I could start sending them to agents. At the least, I'd need an infinitely more well-polished manuscript before I could send anything, and that would be many many grueling hours (I'm a writer, not a fan of editing too much).

Why am I telling you all of this? Good question. Part of it is that I just want to share my experience on Wattpad with you, whether it offers you some perspective or gives you solace in finding someone else with similar issues. Part of it is because for the particularly young writers, I want to try to humanize some of the more popular wattpaders on here. Compared to the truly popular, my 1200 followers are nothing, but for someone just starting out, that can seem like an impossibly high number.

Lastly, I just want to bring awareness to the idea of finishing a novel (rough draft, let's not get into manuscripts for the moment). I actually wrote this chapter in order to make comments about finishing novels (something a lot of writers haven't done) in wake of my most recently completed novel.

Most novels won't end with a bang, even if you write an exciting climax... don't expect your reader base to necessarily reflect that. You might feel a little depressed, or perhaps nostalgic after writing one. The trick is to give yourself some breathing room, and don't allow yourself to succumb to your own hype. If you planned a story to be 1 story, unless someone's paying you a LOT, don't let commenters guilt you into writing more. Don't rush into the next story. Take your time. Breath. In the end, you'll suffer a lot more from getting burned out than you'll suffer from taking planned breaks. Also... as an aside... don't expect the popularity of one book to carry on over to another book, even from the same series.

I created a book "Everything Ever Written" which has continued my trend of chapters like "Every Fanfiction ever written." But while you guys are happy to vote and comment and star on those chapters in Wattpad 101, you won't touch the same exact chapters in another book. I guarantee you that if I put some of my latest chapter from that book into Wattpad 101, they'd beat it out for stars within a DAY.

Every book is on it's own, regardless of the success of it's predecessor or even... you know... the same freaking chapters in another book! Like... are you guys offended by clicking more than once? I don't get it. But while it seems like I'm ragging on readers, I'm really just trying to let writers to know what they can expect when it comes to readers. You guys buying that excuse? Well, if you don't, what are you going to do, comment? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

...sorry...

Either way, I think the main take away is whatever you do after finishing a novel, don't write an awkward, contemplative piece talking about your history on wattpad and then sneak it into your self-help book. People who do that are the worst.