Ellis Van Wyk

Greyhound (ie, Severin Quilby) is back on Wattpad while i very slowly edit it. working on a short story with a friend (stay tuned), a short story for an anthology (also stay tuned), and the rest of Rotten Parts (i suspect i am about halfway through, which would put it about 30-40k words over Lonesome Ghosts. happy working this Nanowrimo season!

thinking of republishing the draft for Severin Quilby (or Greyhound, as i want to rename it. would anyone want it back online while i slowly work on edits? 
          
          xx to everyone still reading, writing, and to those who've discovered my lil stories <3

*new chapter new chapter*
          i think i've finally broken through writer's block and depression block. i'm afraid to be excited. here's another Rotten Parts chapter :3
          https://www.wattpad.com/1467211420-rotten-parts-29-evan-present-day

publishing five chapters a day for the next five days of Rotten Parts until i catch back up to where i was (i don't want to assault anyone's notifications)!

(i'll preface this by saying i needed and appreciate all of the kind words levied at me with regards to my stay at wattpad, as well as managing my expectations with the site. i shall reply as soon as i can !)
          
          as i slowly emerge from my depressive cocoon, you may notice a few changes 'round these parts. for one, I've renamed a lot of my stories, permanently taken a few down, and tweaked my general profile. a quick guide to new titles
          The Ghost of Winn Peterson -> Lonesome Ghosts
          The Twenty-Seven Statues of Severin Quibly. -> Greyhound
          The Autobiography of Evan Hase -> Rotten Parts
          while i am quite fond of all the old titles, they're a bit clunky and repetitive. if you decide to follow my kofi link, you'll find all of the old books still as they were. i'm fond of keeping preservations of my drafts as they were when i finished them! 
          
          since Evan Hase was so rudely deleted, i'll be reuploading it and hopefully finishing it by the next NaNoWriMo. Severin Quilby is currently undergoing much-delayed edits and extensive additions to the draft. many thanks to Lorraine Tramain and Sfarda Gül for their assistance in this regard! 
          
          as a last announcement, my short story in the Greykin Press 'In the Neck of the Woods' was published last month! go peep out my instagram sometime next week to check out the book, as well as Greykin's site to support their amazing work!
          
          xx ellis

it's almost august, which means my creator's contract almost ends. in the two years i've been, i have seen almost no interaction for my story, nor the pace i put into writing a 100k word novel for the first time in my life. since writing Winn Peterson, i have grappled long and hard with whether or not to delete my wattpad account by the end of my contract. while writing here has given me the necessary push and pace to write and write consistently, i also don't feel as though wattpad is the right place for my genre and intended demographic (though i do wish people of all ages, backgrounds, etc find something worthwhile in my stories). 
          
          i plan on self-publishing some of my earlier work once i groom them a bit and give them some much needed trimmings. my current work was inexplicably deleted from my drafts (curious, since it would have technically been my only wattys-eligible work), and sitting in my drafts has given me a desire to both complete it, and retread my roots as a gothic artist. it is my hope that by the end of the year, i have both finished that story and delved deeply into a new one sitting in my idea-drafts. 
          
          if you'd find any value in my presence here, then i shall not hesitate to remain and resume my anemic interactions, but as it stands now, i simply don't have the energy or willpower to keep writing on wattpad.

"Is there any reason why stories once submitted but did not previously win cannot reenter? To have a fresh story to submit every year - where there are only ten stories that win now (per completed/ongoing category) and all ten of those stories could technically be all be one genre like Romance, thereby making your odds of winning a Watty significantly lower than in previous years - seems like a difficult task, especially for writers with various disabilities that would hinder speedier writing paces, or writers that juggle their writing time with rearing children or working full time to support themselves and others." 
          
          this should be a big red flag, to have a brand new story submitted every single year. if you have a lot of stories, what are the odds you wrote them during the eligibility window? it seems like we're being groomed for who can pump out financially viable stories quickly, and that just does not sit well with me, because it doesn't sound like they actually care about genuine, passionate, or diverse products. 

i can no longer find Evan Hase in my drafts... can Wattpad delete stories from your drafts now?? glad i have it backed up to death

I am ridiculously exhausted with Wattpad. 
          
          I am often not online due to high bouts of burnout and exhaustion, but if you would like a writing-friendly space where you can communicate outside of story comments, DM me before April 30 to get a discord link to a group of warm, welcoming writers with a penchant for being weird, funny, emotional, and who all have experience with self and trad publishing. 
          
          Stay strong together, even when our writing security is actively being hunted down, friends

After much consideration, I think it's likely time for me to depart from Wattpad. I've met the most wonderful group of people in the reading/writing world, and am glad to have read so many ARCs, drafts, and finished stories, but being endlessly ignored by the program that invited me to write consistently for a year is really weighing on me. I've done a lot of soul searching in this last year, and I have come to the conclusion that I'm not prepared to write romance or werewolf stories that revolve around packs, and not insane amounts of gore, simply for the reads or notice by Wattpad :3 Obviously, I throw no shade to those of you who do write this stuff (writing is hard and admirable regardless of what genre you write); it's Wattpad's handling of promotion and utter disregard for diversity in any form that I'm throwing shade at. 
          
          In the next year, I'm hoping to self publish a few of the stories I have completed since joining Wattpad. Self promotion has to be easier on my rather old fashioned genre of choice, anyway. 
          
          As Winn Peterson was my book for the Creators program (whether that meant anything or not, aha), I'll probably leave her up until my contract ends in August. Otherwise, the rest will be down likely by Friday at the latest. If you're keen on reading anything before it goes, you're more than welcome to visit my website, where I'll be putting up links for these lil stories' new home. Saturnalia is, of course, still published via my last penname Eli Gregory on Amazon, if you're keen on supporting me that way. If you want to keep in contact, you can find me on Instagram via ellis.van.wyk, the easiest way to get in contact with me. 
          
          Cheers for a scribbly four years!
          Ellis