Nothing in Particular

Wattys 2020 + Data Breach

So... honest opinion about Wattys 2020...

I absolutely hate the new rules. It requires the story to be completed (which I can understand!) BUT it also requires the story to have at least 50k words. Granted that it's the minimum number of words for a book to be counted as a novel and to be eligible for the Paid Stories programme but guess what? I don't care. They freaking set the bar higher by more than twice the requirement last year.

What?

So here I am desperately trying to complete Kiss and Tell as soon as I can before editing Begin Again to increase its word count to 50k. After that, I need to finish Coral Bay. And I have to juggle all that with my studies. I'm graduating this year! It's stressful enough! Now, Wattpad decides to give me such nonsense.

But it's okay. I'm not complaining :)

That all is fine. There's always next year since they changed the time requirement which means Coral Bay will be eligible for the Wattys for the next 2 years?? That is if the requirement will be the same. 2020 is trash enough; I don't care anymore.

I just feel bad for fanfic writers who are also required to unpublish their books on other websites in order to be eligible for the Wattys. Wattpad doesn't even care about fanfics. It only cares about original work. It's not like fan fiction can be published.

Anyway, ONC2020! I know it ended ages ago. But like... I'm only talking about it now. Haha. Anyway, all my entries didn't make into the Long list which is kind of sad because Kiss and Tell did and I honestly think Begin Again was a lot better than it. So I spent some time thinking what possibly went wrong with my book! Then I realised they only read the first 20k words which means they don't get to see my beautiful ending.

Their loss :P

I'm going to pretend Sparks Fly and Mismatched don't exist at the moment. I really wish Wattpad had the function to merge books cuz I really want to do that with Sparks Fly and Mismatched so that I won't lose any reads, votes and precious comments. Yeah, I'm more concerned about the comments. It's what brings the book to life!

Now for important stuff...

Wattpad suffered a data breach on 29 June and it was only reported on 19 July. A total of 268,765,495 accounts have been affected! So... please change your password as soon as possible, and the password of the email you use for Wattpad and every website you use your Wattpad password on.

Compromised data: bios, dates of birth, email addresses, genders, geographic locations, IP addresses, names, passwords, social media platforms, user website URLs, and usernames.

I also just learnt that I never indicated my gender on Wattpad so... yeah... I'm genderless to Wattpad's database :P anyway, the only things leaked are what you let Wattpad know. Your personal information is not leaked... of course unless you put them up on Wattpad... but why would you do that, right?

Anyway, stay safe throughout this COVID-19 pandemic! :)