Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay
As I have promised previously, I am sharing my first Novella, “Unknown Songs”, in its entirety. In the time between these two blog posts, stuff happened, the most relevant being me finishing the novella, so I published it on Wattpad and took a part in The Wattys at the end of 2018. “The Wattys” is the anual contest that Wattpad organizes, in which everybody can participate with whatever they write. My novella ended up on The Longlist, however it couldn’t make it in the next round, The Shortlist.
The 2018 Longlist had around 800 stories, out of 362000 submissions in total. I have no clue what mechanism was used to choose stories for it, but I assume it was automated, and somehow my story made it, out of those three hundred and sixty-two thousands.
The Shortlist was… well… Shorter. I believe 100 or so stories. Obviously this was automated as well, since it was fast and it’s no way some people curated it (unless there was a group of people and each curated a number of stories, but that would mean it’s not a proper evaluation, so I doubt it) but my story didn’t pass this filter, so that was the end of the road for it.
After the Shortlist, the Finalists were chosen, this time I assume not through automated means. I aim to understand this contest, as I am willing to take part in it again, although I don’t think “Unknown Songs” will be the novella of choice next time, because since it didn’t pass automated filters the first time, there’s little reason to believe it has a chance the second time.
To conclude, even though Wattys 2018 was a miss, my story remained published on Wattpad and I got some nice feedback from the few people that read it, which means I am content with the outcome, and willing to try more next time.
Below you can find the link and read the story. There’s a Wattpad app you can use on your smart device, and it also has a night mode, so I hope you will find the experience pleasant.
My Story:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/153331746-unknown-songs
Wattpad App for Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=wp.wattpad
Wattpad App for iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/app/free-books-wattpad-ebook-reader/id306310789
Wattpad App for Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/ro-ro/p/wattpad-free-books-and-stories/9nblggh6gm17
Indru, The Writer
