The last blog post I made was on New Year’s day. It’s crazy how much time has flown since then but also to see how far I’ve come in the matter of just four months. I completed my undergraduate degree in March, went on an amazing trip to Kashmir with my parents (it was literally Heaven on Earth and the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen), turned 21 and now I’m getting ready to begin ‘adulting’ with the impending start of a corporate job a week from now.
*le gasp*
It’s all very exciting and nerve-wracking, really. Knowing that the next era of my life is about to begin and this time I’d have no cushion to fall back on called ‘education’ or ‘school/university life’. Apart from my plans on this front, I’ve also started to think about what I want to achieve writing-wise. I have three completed stories, all worthy enough of being sent to a publisher with just a little bit of polishing (in my humble-but-dangerously-confident opinion that is) but it is one particular story of mine that I plan to revamp to perfection: The Closer.
I am dubbed the ‘Queen of Romance’ by fellow writer-friends. I’d like to think I ‘major’ in writing love stories (if that were even possible). It’s been the genre I’ve focused on since I was a kid. But The Closer was quite different from what I’d written so far. For a start, I wrote it cause of a dare I received from my best friend who bet I could write a sexy, adult love story that could put Fifty Shades to shame (let’s just say she wasn’t a fan of that series). I was terrified. R-rated territory was new to me. But I took on the challenge and had fun with it and produced my best piece of writing in the process: a comedic, sensual and utterly sexy story. I gathered the nerve to publish it on the online writing community I was a part of – Wattpad. My updates started to slow as life caught up to me.
Having been on hiatus for a long time, I decided to make a come-back a couple days ago and was surprised by the popularity that my published work had garnered over the past couple months. My inactivity on the site had translated to an ignorance of just how much the story had blown up online. As of yesterday, it crossed 500K reads.
That’s right! My baby’s got over 500,000 reads!
Update: As of October 2021, The Closer has almost reached 4 MILLION reads!
I dedicated some time to reading through all the comments on the chapters and couldn’t believe the viewership it had gained. People from all over the world were reading my book. It was crazy!
Hooooly shizzles.
Some praised my writing style, loved my characters and were rather vocal about it. Others disagreed with plot twists and constructively critiqued some of the character development. I had personal messages and posts from readers who told me they were inspired by my book and they couldn’t believe it wasn’t published already. One fellow Wattpader even went so far as to tell me I was the sole reason she joined the site. I was awestruck and still am to be honest.
Never had I imagined a story I’d started writing on a simple dare from a friend would develop into something so big. There’s potential here and I want to do something with it.
Rereading the first draft, I’ve identified a bunch of plot-holes, character inconsistencies and some elements that require serious touch-ups. I’m essentially doing a re-write and changing the entire conflict in the novel which lacks a lot of back-bone in the version uploaded on Wattpad. I plan on getting the second draft as close to literary perfection as possible, forming it into a manuscript and sending it off to various publishers.
I did a little research and they take a minimum of 6 months to merely review the manuscript and get back with an acceptance/rejection letter. And that’s if they’re feeling nice. That’s a whole lot of waiting so I better get to cracking on this novel.
The challenge? Oh, only the regular. Finishing off my CIMA certification, juggling work when it begins with my (non-existent) social life and just about managing to eat, sleep and survive through all of it. But a little voice in my head said: ‘once you identify something that can open a door for you: you have to pursue it, no matter how difficult the path’.
The Closer is going to be tough to get published in a lot of ways – regarding the actual process of rewriting and editing it as well as the cultural conflicts and ‘image’ that it might put across to some of my personal contacts that I wish to publish an adult book (more on this later). But I’ve got a hell lot of determination and even more support from my readers to do this.
So it’s time to get to writing!
Would you like to be a part of my publishing journey?
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