The Publicist

A/n To Follow Your Heart or Popularity

There will come a time as a writer when you must choose whether to follow your heart or follow popular trends. Most people experience this at the beginning of their writing journey when they come up with a popular idea and people don't quite understand it, so they reject it. Not necessarily because it is bad, but because it is in the nature of most people to reject that which is different.

I didn't experience that until I wrote this book. From the moment I published it, without reading one chapter solely based on the description, people rejected it. Screenshots floated around twitter. Popular authors called to arm their tribes to harass me in the comments. It was truly an experience. A disappointing one, but even if in the court of public opinion I was wrong, I still followed my heart. And here we are now

A lot of writers on wattpad write for entertainment and that's fine. I have been entertained by many a books. And I suppose that's why I even started writing. That was up until my second book "If That's What It Takes." It was toward end of that book, when I started getting dm's that people at one point or another, felt like Nate.

And then as I wrote Life After Marriage, the dms got deeper and more heartbreaking. I couldn't believe some of the stuff actually people had been through. It was then I realized, I can't write for entertainment anymore.

There are living, breathing humans on the other end of this thing, although on here they are solely represented by an avatar, and I have a duty to handle the fragility of their lives with the upmost care.

And so I started adding messages of hope. Hoping it would touch anybody going through it. And The Publicist started as purely entertainment, until I encountered women who had been where Jazz had been. And it's not just one person. My inbox is filled with these stories and I asked these women how they overcame and I got different responses.

But it reminded me, and the conscious that I have, that for the rest of this story I have a duty to these women affected.

That leads me to deciding whether I should follow my heart which lies with the women affected, or follow popular opinion which is represented by the boisterous voices in the comments.

I don't have an ending yet, but I do have a direction. And I feel it is my duty as a writer to give full disclosure of that direction, before we proceed any further so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not this is the book that you want to continue reading. So below is a checklist of things you can ask yourself to make that decision.

If you're looking for entertainment with no real message, the rest of this story isn't for you.
If you're looking for a story where after Jazz has already experienced pure trauma with the death of her last boyfriend, she willingly throws herself back into drama with August, this book is not for you.
If you're looking for a story where August will not have to face the consequences of his actions. Meaning one sad look. One sad song. One cough. One apology. Some flowers. Candy and good fuck means making up, this is not for you.
Jazmine will not be a Gabrielle Union who married Dwayne Wade after he had a baby on her. She will not be Eudoxie, Ludacris's wife, who he had a baby on, then got her pregnant and they had a shotgun wedding. If you're looking for this kind of dysfunctional drama, you won't find it here.
WHAT THE BOOK WILL BE ABOUT

The rest of the book will be about Jazmine finding herself, learning how to forgive after being hurt so deeply, and picking up the pieces from there. If that means her an August will be together, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too.

Either way, your "threats" to no longer read this book will not make me change the direction of MY story. We can make an amicable decision to part ways at this point, because I'm not budging. And I wouldn't dare ask you to either. I appreciate you while you here, and I totally understand. No love loss.

But as a writer, even if it is on wattpad, even if I'm not getting paid, I have a duty to my readers out there who have lived these experiences or facing them now and I must be careful with the fragility of their pain.

I didn't get on Wattpad to be popular and that will never be my mission.

I'm following my heart like I did when I first started writing. And whether I have 5 or 500 hundred readers, I'm going to continue to write the stories I want to write.

What's actually baffling to me is so many people complain that there are so many stories like this. Where the guy cheats, he gets the girl pregnant, and she goes back. But the moment someone takes a different route with the same plot line, World War III happens in the comments. But anyway chile, I'm sleep.

For the readers I got left, Love y'all. I can't tell you what the ending will be. But I promise you it will be beautiful.

xoxox