YES!!!!!! Tonight Evening Star passed 100,000 reads and 1,000 votes on Wattpad, and I now have passed the 200 fans mark as well.
All tonight.
So very cool!!! Wow. I'm just flabbergasted. I came home from church today to over twenty comments on my stories alone.
So, thank you to all of you who read my stories...to all who vote, comments, review, and offer feedback. You're all wonderful...and I love you all! :)
And I'm so grateful. So, so grateful.
And I'm thrilled to keep on writing...because I can't seem to stop. ;)
With gratitude,
Cassandra :)
I am thrilled to report that Evening Star is just about to pass 100,000 reads and 1000 votes on Wattpad.
That's a fairly important milestone. There are some stories on Wattpad that have gone practically viral, with over a million reads. But passing 100,000 is still quite impressive. Wattpad has over one million registered users, so my first little fan fic (and only second work of fiction since college) attracting a very respectable number of readers is very satisfying.
Of course, as the readers/writers are mostly teen girls who compose most of their stories directly into Wattpad without editing, revising, or proofreading, my stories would look quite professional by comparison.
If only I could receive similar readership on FanFiction.net although I suspect that my stories would need a great deal more sex to become truly popular there. I have barely 150 reviews for 47 chapters which is pretty discouraging.
FanFiction.net certainly hosts more discerning readers and a much higher quality of writing. "Betas," or story editors, help writers to revise and edit their work, thus creating a far more professional product than what one sees on Wattpad. I have been invited to become a Beta on FanFiction.net, but I'm still helping one writer on Wattpad with her story plus I have enough grading to do IRL.
Being a writing teacher has both its privileges and its drawbacks.
I am almost finished with Chapter 3 of Pinned but Fluttering; I'll update it over the weekend. I haven't started Chapter 48 of Evening Star yet but hope to get to it over the weekend as well, despite all the teaching work I have to do: grading outlines and preparing new lessons for my online class and preparing handouts for my two co-op classes for next week, besides doing our own three boys' school planning for the upcoming week.
I just finished a few decent fics this week--nothing extraordinary, but solid reads, if you're interested. Here are the titles, authors, and links:
The Tutor by ItzMegan73
Distractions by windchymes
Blood Lines also by windchymes
Out of the three, Blood Lines was my favorite by far--a fresh take on the events after Eclipse with a very different plot line that takes us through Edward and Bella's wedding and parenthood. Very, very intriguing, and a wonderful explanation for Edward's reluctance for sex with Bella and his own feelings of inadequacy. Very well done and definitely recommended.
So, have a pleasant and productive weekend, my friends, and I'll be chatting at you very soon!
--Cassandra
Okay, I just uploaded Chapter Two of Pinned but Fluttering on both Wattpad and FanFiction.net. See sidebar for links to both sites.
The chapters for this fic are starting off short--around 2000 words. We'll see if they lengthen. I'm trying something completely new by going off-canon and very OOC regarding the Blacks. My first fic, Evening Star, with which I am nearly finished, attempts to remain true to canon, thus somewhat limiting creativity.
And as a nonfiction writer, creativity, especially in plotting, just isn't my "thing."
But I'm trying.
I did get a really wonderful idea the other day, though. I thought that I may keep writing Pinned but Fluttering as my NaNoWriMo novel. If I write 2K words/day, which is just about what one needs to get to 50K words in one month, then I should end up with 30 chapters for the story. I'll be joining at least two former students plus at least one new student at NaNoWriMo this November, so it should be a challenge.
I am teaching an online class during November, but I hope it won't require too much of my time, so I hope to be able to make a go at NaNoWriMo. Last year I took on a poetry-writing challenge instead, and I probably would have spent less time writing fiction.
Now if I'll ever find time to actually revise a NaNoWriMo novel....
Yeah....
Anyway, I'm reading a terrific fic right now called Distractions by windchymes. It's set during New Moon with an alternate storyline in which Bella realizes that Edward lied, that he still loves her. Very intriguing--I'm quite enjoying it.
Well, I hope to write Chapter 47 of Evening Star this weekend; we'll see. I have a couple of pages of it done, so it's a definite possibility. ;)
Have a wonderful weekend, all!
--Cassandra
Wow. I'm rather flabbergasted.
My works--two stories (and two little poems)--just passed 1000 votes on Wattpad. That's quite an accomplishment!
I started posting on Wattpad six weeks before I discovered fanfiction.net. A certain story drew me into the Wattpad world, and I decided to try my hand at writing fan fiction, too.
There are many stories on Wattpad, in fan fiction and other categories, that have garnered amazing popularity, as in over a million reads. So my "success" there has been promising but not out-of-this-world.
But with Evening Star being more of a character study than a page-turner (more like Pinned but Fluttering will be), I'm quite pleased with the support it has received on Wattpad.
But the same can't be said for fanfiction.net. Perhaps I don't know the proper way to garner support there--do I need a thread on Twilighted? How does one go about doing that? I've received just over 100 reviews for Evening Star there. That's nothing. I have a few fans who stick with me through thick and thin, but perhaps my story just isn't that good when compared to the higher-quality fics posted on fanfiction.net vs. Wattpad.
Sigh.
But I posted this to celebrate the 1000 vote mark on Wattpad, and celebrate I shall! I've written a rough draft of Chapter 2 of Pinned but Fluttering that I hope to expand into a full chapter--it's about half of its necessary length right now. And I have plans for a really scary/thrilling chapter coming up soon.
The details of Pinned by Fluttering are falling into place beautifully, and I think it's going to be a really good story--something I'm not really that good at coming up with. Plotting is my weak point, which is why I've stuck to nonfiction until this point.
And Evening Star is drawing to a close, although I seriously doubt I'll be able to stick with my original plan of 50 chapters; it's going to take a few more than that. (I can hear the cheers over on Wattpad right now, LOL!)
BTW, I just finished reading a fan fic that I had to add to my Completed Fave Fan Fics list in the sidebar--it just blew me away in its complexity, psychological insight, angst (gotta love the angst!), theme of forgiveness despite horrendous injury, and the message that love may not "conquer" all, but it may slowly help to heal deep, deep wounds. It's extremely well-written, insightful, provocative, and deep. I found myself up past 4 AM reading it--and I didn't get much done this week because I was so bleary-eyed and muddle-headed from staying up so late reading it.
IOW, if you haven't already, go read Alleeab4u's Falling Beyond Redemption. (Just click on the title and you'll love it!)
Sooooo, here's to celebrating milestones and to keepin' on writing, no matter the response!
Cheers!
--Cassandra
My grand plan this weekend was to upload a chapter each of Evening Star and Pinned but Fluttering.
But as happens so often, life gets in the way.
A parent whose high school sophomore in my online writing class was upset about my apparent neglect of an area of research. So I spent the great majority of Saturday, my usual fan fic writing day, drafting a seven-page document on the reliability and authority of various non-print resources.
Yeah--exciting, eh?
It's true that it should have been treated in greater depth than I had planned, but researching, writing, editing, and posting that new lesson, plus re-editing and uploading four other lessons, took up all of my day Saturday. Right until 3 AM Sunday morning, to be precise.
With only four hours of sleep, I ended up napping for four additional hours on Sunday--day of rest and all that.
Which left me with my holiday to write my fan fics. Over the course of the week I had drafted Chapter 46 of Evening Star. It became quite lengthy for me--3300 words when my average is 2500. But something about it just isn't right, so although it's edited and technically DONE, I'm going to sleep on it another night and reread it--and possibly revise it--tomorrow.
Today (or I guess I should say "yesterday" since it's coming up on 2:00 AM Tuesday morning)--okay, Monday was devoted to meeting the deadline for the discussion questions for the literary analysis course I'll be teaching starting on Hallowe'en. My boss gave me through this weekend to complete them, which is a bit of an extension as they're usually due on the 1st of the month. So my day was spent drafting, revising, retooling, rethinking, etc., nine lengthy multiple-part questions for Anne of Green Gables.
At least I have that book practically memorized. ;)
So I confess: I have not even started writing Chapter 2 of Pinned but Fluttering. I have a decided idea where it's going--and it may go into some very, very dark and OOC corners before our hero steps in--yes, I'm unabashedly Team Edward. I hope to work on Pinned but Fluttering over the course of this week.
It could be that writing two chapters each weekend while teaching an online course may be unrealistic. I may have to consider alternating weekends--one week a new chapter for Evening Star, and the next a new chapter of Pinned but Fluttering.
It's a good thing that I'm almost finished with Evening Star, isn't it?
Okay, I hope that I've opened the portals so that creative story ideas will start flooding my brain, my fingers barely able to keep up with typing them into my groaning laptop. (Yes, it's rather archaic.)
Anyway, I'll take a fresh look at Chapter 46 of ES in the morning and see what is salvageable. Then I'll tackle Chapter 2 of PBF as I go through the week...teaching my online research course...running a household of six people and one dachshund convinced he's human...home educating three boys in grades 6, 9, and 11...driving my college-aged daughter to work two-to-three times/week and to community college twice/week...preparing for my literary analysis online course later this fall/winter...preparing to teach one high school expository writing class and one 4th-6th grade medieval history class at our co-op starting on the 15th...helping my chiropractor get started on his book...proofreading and editing for several churches and missionary groups...writing and updating the various blogs I keep up for myself and organizations near and dear...and enjoying the peace, quiet, and decided lack of interruption that writing at 2:00 AM, the house darkened and sleeping, affords.
Yeah. I'll get right on that.
After I go scream in a spidery corner for a few moments, that is....
--Cassandra
