A Guide To My Books (My Wattpad Journey)

My Wattpad Journey

Who am I ?

I have always been an avid and enthusiastic reader of detective series, suspenseful mysteries and unpredictable thrillers since childhood. To be precise, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew are some of the best English narratives among my favourite picks. Since I belong from Kolkata, the Bengal famous Satyajit Ray and his detective series of Feluda, Sharadindu Banerjee and his fictional character Byomakesh Bakshi also top my reading chart (I have an uncountable number of such books on my shelves 🤓).

During my childhood days, I was in the habit of writing mysterious short stories in a personally maintained offline diary (didn't even have a cellphone during those days). They say that generally introvert people take to writing because they find it difficult to express themselves in the outer world, but my case is different. I'm not an introvert at all, rather writing provides me the self-contentment of keeping my extrovert tongue in control 😂. What I mean is I can coop up in a quiet corner and go on writing for long hours in loneliness without food, water or sleep!

As I grew up, I was mostly focused towards studies. After completing my graduation in the subject of physics, I started pursuing my post-graduation in the subject of Anthropology (human science). While reading the subject, I took to liking human culture and behavior, especially how we evolved and came into being, our genetics and inheritance. Right now, I'm in my early twenties and linked with researches on the primitive life of the tribals in restricted areas and fieldworks based on their survival patterns.

I write often during my leisure time whenever I'm free from work. Writing gives me the privilege of enjoying the most needed soothing sensation after a hectic work schedule. It has always encouraged me to broaden my ways of thinking on social and moral issues, and throwing light on those topics through the voice of an author.

Uploading and sharing my stories online on any website was never on my mind until one brother of mine suggested Wattpad to me. He had read one of my full length novels (first rough version of 'Sacrifice and Realisation') and said that he was appalled by my way of writing. According to him, my stories weren't supposed to be kept in secrecy but to be shared with the outside world.

I gave his suggestion a serious thought and decided to accept his advice. But instead of joining Wattpad, I created an account on a different website and started writing the same novel as a fan fiction. Excitement overtook me when my story began to gain popularity and luckily, I came across an online article on the rising of new published authors from Wattpad. I deleted my entire original story on the other website to give Wattpad a real try and also for copyright issues (Wattpad's copyright feature is far more secure).

Finally on the 12th of January, 2017 (National Youth Day), I created an account on Wattpad under a real+pen name (Rinka is my original name and Ritz a pen name) as my username. I uploaded the entire story (chapter wise) of 'Sacrifice and Realisation' on Wattpad in a couple of days and waited patiently for people to read it here.

The first few days were on low tide and I was gaining only one or two readers in an entire week, and sometimes none. In the meantime, I took to reading books of different writers on the Wattpad platform and the flaws in my own writing became visible to me.

To be honest, I was contended with the first 98 followers of mine. My first published book on Wattpad had gained more than 10K reads over a few months but I was not happy with my way of narration. It took me many weeks to somewhat learn the art of descriptive and narrative writing.

In early 2018, I finally deleted the previous rough version of 'Sacrifice and Realisation' after much contemplation, and started rewriting it offline. It was then that the Golden Birds' Awards 2018 was announced by AmbassadorsIN and entries were open for Indian authors. There was a major criteria, I mean they were only accepting completed stories and had provided a deadline. I counted the number of days and there was exactly 32 days left for the final submission.