Your Favourite Wattpad YA Authors

LEPalphreyman

Author: LEPalphreyman

Books Well-Known For: Cupid's Match and Thorn

How long have you been writing? I was always writing stories as a child (I remember one of my primary school teachers being adamant I'd be a writer when I grew up)! But I completed my first full length (and completely terrible!) novel about eight years ago. And I'd say I've been taking writing seriously for the last 5 or 6 years.

What do you love about writing? I love the feeling of creating something; of turning a blank page into a whole new world! I think it's an incredibly rewarding feeling.

What's your favourite genre to write and why? I love romance, I love action, I love silly jokes, and I love magic! So my stories tend to be weird genre mash-ups(!), but I'd say I predominantly write Fantasy Romance / Paranormal Romance with characters who have lots of silly banter!

Do you have any advice to offer aspiring writers? Write a lot. Read a lot. Celebrate the small successes. And - this sounds a bit negative(!) - but learn to deal with failure.

I think one of the one universal truths about being a writer, is that, at some point or other, we will fail. Often, actually! Whether that's through rejections, bad reviews, getting bad deals, not selling as many books as we'd hoped, not getting as many reads as we'd thought on platforms like Wattpad, not hitting bestseller lists, etc.

When I first started writing I found failure and rejection really hard to deal with. It's so easy to take the bad stuff badly and to get bitter and to give up. But realistically it's all just part of the job!

One thing that I should have realised earlier than I did is that writing is like any other career – you start at the bottom and you work your way up – honing your craft, building on your successes, and learning from your failures. It takes time, practice, and work. Unless your incredibly lucky you're not going to expect to walk into a CEO job of a corporation with no experience -and unless you're incredibly lucky you're probably not going to sell the first thing you ever write for millions of dollars, either! It's just we're exposed to quite a lot of those overnight success stories (that are not usually 'overnight successes' anyway – anyone who gets a book deal has put the work in!) – which makes us think that's the norm of writing and publishing (when it's not!).

There's a quote by Richard Bach who says, 'a professional writer is an amateur that didn't quit'. And I think that's so spot on. Writing isn't some mystical, innate talent. Like anything else you get better at writing the more you practice it. And to do that you need to learn to keep going – regardless of success or failure.

Do you plan to have a future involved with writing? Yes! I've been offered some great opportunities through writing on Wattpad, and at the moment, I'm financially supporting myself as a writer – which is awesome, and I hope I can continue to do it in the future!

What project are you currently working on? I'm currently writing Cupid's Match book 3!

To conclude the questions today, can you tell us a fun fact about yourself? I have a Masters degree in Criminology, so people I know always wonder why I'm not writing crime fiction! For now, I prefer writing about cupids! But maybe one day!