I want to tell about my Wattpad adventure in this article. It has high recognition among young readers; has brought many writers, good and bad, to the literary world; sometimes became the target of prejudice, criticism or appreciation.
Wattpad, is a social media founded in 2006 in Canada. It enables users to share their writings with other users. In short, it’s a literacy platform.
The books here are published without any editorial control, which brings positive and negative results. Freedom and ease of access are examples of good effects; but there are also downsides such as poor quality books to stand out because they are popular.
In 2014, I created an account on Wattpad.
I still don’t remember how I discovered this website. I must have seen it somewhere, then I must have created an account with a few clicks. I’ve always been someone who likes to write; but the idea of publishing my writings in a place like this was new to me.
I would delete most of what I had written before, and keep some of them on the computer. Oh, also there were fan fictions I posted on pages on Facebook. I used to think and write these fictions instantly, and they mostly stayed where they were published. Therefore, I don’t remember the name or the subject of any of them except two.
Who was I writing about these fan fiction, of course maNga. ☺️ I was maNga’s crazy fangirl when I was a teenager. I still listen to their songs and they are still my favorite band, but there is no old craziness on me, I grew up.
Vahşetten Öte (Overviolence), this was the name of one of the two stories that I remember. In 2013, I wrote on a page called Rockluminati. I had a virtual friend group of ten people who followed each chapter with enthusiasm. I was also using their name in the story. It was a psychopathic story. The killer kidnaps group members, lock them up in the basement of a mansion in the woods, and torture them. My nickname among friends was Saw VIII. I loved to write killer or horror stories until I fell in love with science fiction.
Later, I tried to rewrite Overviolence a few times, took it out of fan fiction category by putting original characters it in, but no way. That vibe was not got again.
Until I got the idea of injecting this story into another story that still had not a vibe…
Yes, I’m talking about Balçık ve Sırça (Clay and Glass). In 2016, I started to write this novel, which I deleted and started over and over again, in which I talk about the human-like creatures called megalas.
Readers remember, at first there was Horan, who was only a zarkanat as the main character, talking about his daily troubles, etc. Later, the kidnapped people got into it. Here that part of the novel comes from Overviolence. For now, it’s well. Let’s see if I can finish this time.
(Update in 2024: I couldn’t finish it. If I start writing again, Clay and Glass will be much different. There will be no trace of Overviolence in it.)
The second story that I remember from my fan fiction periods is Ben Senden Vazgeçmem (I Won’t Give You Up or another name I prefer: Not Allowed). In 2014, I wrote three or five chapters and left it unfinished. When I found the drafts in 2017, I cleared the fan-fic elements and rewrote them with original characters.
(Update in 2024: Later, I removed I Won’t Give You Up from Wattpad, edited it once again, changed the character names again and published it on Google Play with the name Unauthorized.)
The bottom line is, I created my Wattpad account in 2014 and haven’t touched it for a few months.
I was in search of new things.
The next year, in 2015, I was at a loose end. I was religiously confused, my life was confused, my academic life was terrible, etc. In this bad period, writing reached out to me like divine help, like an olive branch.
I started writing. I was writing, adding new chapters, posting my old writings on the one hand, and promoting on social media on the other hand. Transplant of Life, was the book I wrote at that time and which I trusted the most. Apart from that, there were a few other books I wrote but I deleted them because they were weak; For example, I was writing an action book called Rüyalar Kızı (Dream Girl), a high school student by day and a teenage girl who is a mafioso in the evening. It was full of clichés.
I also wrote the first draft of Renaissance in the Daisy Field earlier that year, but it would take September to publish it on Wattpad, and for the first time I was going to start enjoying success that month.
There was hope for me among daisies.
I had begun to write Renaissance in the Daisy Field with strong inspiration. Sentences were being built in my mind one by one. Most of the time, my hands couldn’t keep up with my brain speed. The book attracted considerable attention on Wattpad, and the comments on each chapter also increased my desire.
In the early days of writing, I started making videos to promote the book. Of course, both my technical knowledge and my financial strength were not enough to make a short film; I was doing it by cutting appropriate scenes from existing films.
I used Windows Movie Maker 12 to cut and combine videos, and Audacity to edit music.
While I was looking for sections that could represent my characters in the book, the movie called S. Darko came as a godsend. The lead actor resembled Crescent -one of the book’s protagonists- and the movie wasn’t watched much.
You know the movie Donnie Darko, it’s about time paradox, it’s a really nice and brainstorming movie. Again, you probably know that sometimes they make sequels to well-liked quality movies just for the money, and this new one will suck. Huh, that’s it, S. Darko is one of those movies.
Like a tailor making new clothes from old dresses, I took it, cut and made into an edited video. I stayed awake one night, worked for ten hours, and I made this promo video:
(Turn on subtitles before watching)
The milestone of the book was this video. After uploading it on the Facebook group “Wattpad Türkiye”, it took over 200 likes and comments in a short time. I remember very clearly my surprise and joy.
In the following days, Renaissance in the Daisy Field came to the top in Wattpad’s Historical Fiction category, it was placed for a long time in the first and second place and the final was published in May 2016. (I finished writing a few months ago, February or March. I was posting ready chapters.)
The Interregnum
In the fall of 2016, I started books titled Fatma’nın Portresi (Fatma’s Portrait) and Balçık ve Sırça (Clay and Glass), which I still can’t finish today. However, the books did not sit easily with me, I could not post chapters regularly. My mind, working like a machine gun, had run out of bullets. On the other hand, I was dreaming about my finished book and I was getting desperate when I could not realize it. At that time I wanted to be a writer, have a printed book, but I didn’t know exactly what to do.
This was the case until the spring of 2017. A message came from Wattpad in March. Soysal Publishing Group, wanted to talk about Renaissance in Daisy Field.
So we met, signed the contract – the publication of the book was delayed to the next year for some reasons – and the interregnum ended. My hope, excitement and muse were back.
Muse Knocks at the Door Seven Times
At that time I was living my student life in a dormitory in Ankara. Sometimes I could not sleep at night. I walked into the empty and dark kitchen, wandering and dreaming.
The same figure had begun to appear insistently in my imagination. A girl. Her hair was short. At first, I thought she looked like Velma in Scooby Doo, but over time her appearance started to take on characteristic features.
There was also a young man. From far away he was coming to visit this girl. I didn’t know why he was coming. This girl lived alone in space in the back of beyond. At first there were only these two figures.
One night I realized that I must name them, or rather find their names. Ideas blew in my mind, names came to the tip of my tongue. I thought, “Iskender…”, yes, that was it! The name of the girl was also Hayat. Hayat and Iskender were formed in my mind. I was going to write a story for them. One day, I was going to write a story and it would take place in space.
I started to constantly think about some concepts and symbols. Black hole. Relativity of time. The number seven. Menorah (seven-armed candlestick). Ulu’l azm prophets. Being stated in the Qur’an that the universe was created in six days (stages). Six. Seven. Black hole. Time. I should have combined them. It seemed like I was going crazy, but it was a sweet craziness.
After a few days of thinking, I started thinking that I would write a heptalogy in the future. It would be called Seven Candles. The titles of the books would go as the Seventh Candle, the Sixth Candle… Hayat and Iskender would be protagonists. I thought that I had to do a long research and planning and that I could only start writing in 2020.
I returned home when school broke up because of summer vacation. On a July night, I veered away from my older thought. Because the first chapter’s first words were suddenly embodied in my mind and ready to be written.
I knelt, took a deep breath to feel at the space station where the first chapter was set, and after a while I got up and started writing Seven Candles’ first sentence.
“You’re here,” she thought. “Where stardust forms your cells.”
I actively wrote and read for the next three years. After Renaissance in the Daisy Field was published in 2018, I opened an Instagram account to promote it, started reviewing books there. Then I graduated from school, got a job, completed Seven Candles. Thus we have come to this day.
So, I met Wattpad like this. I hope coming days will bring us all goodness.