I joined the SCP Wiki in January of 2020. The 5000 contest voting period had just started and I made my account solely to vote on the article that would become SCP-5999 and later voting on the article that would win the contest. I had no plans to write; I was a full-time student at an extremely rigorous high school. Writing was never my forte either. I could string together an argument and defend it in an academic essay, but I’ve never written creatively. It was always one of those things I said I’d do when I got the time but I knew that time would never come.
Then the pandemic hit.
My college preparatory high school made it so whatever grade you had prior to the entire world shutting down would remain and no matter your performance you couldn’t get a lower grade than that. Pretty much, I didn’t have to show up to class or do any homework. At this point, I stopped reading the Wiki as I found out Tanhony had won and was happy. After browsing Reddit, an r/SCP post popped up on my Home feed and I remembered I wanted to post something to the site.
My first ever SCP idea was a sharpie marker that granted abilities to people if you wrote an adjective on them. If I wrote 'strong' on your arm with that sharpie you’d get that ability, etc. I wrote a draft for it but never posted it because I couldn’t come up with a fun ending. It was luckily never posted. During this time, I was still kinda doing some homework, and my English class was going over Dante’s Divine Comedy. I enjoyed the book more for its world-building than the religious aspect, and that’s what stuck with me. I decided I’d turn that into some sort of SCP article.
I don’t remember my exact train of thought, but somehow I landed on a festival, animate Roman-era statues, a crab(?), and my main character leaving the Foundation. I got to the ideas forum and it was greenlit by DarkStuff and Dr Sage Evergreen.
My first draft was 14k words long. I was only familiar with the Series 1 famous articles and djkaktus’ work, and seeing the massive numbers he put up led me to believe bigger meant better in terms of quality and reception.
It took me a month to finish that draft. I was looking people to critique it Zyn told me very nicely to fuck off because the draft was way too long for her to care to give it more than a cursory read. Cybersqyd took the time to look over this thing three times and happily did it.
I posted that draft in April, titled it “The Festival of Florence,” and gave it the designation of SCP-5770. I expected to be paraded around like a king for blessing the SCP Wiki with quality work as a first-time author, but that did not happen. My first foray into the SCP Wiki led to that article amassing +24 in a year. Not great, but I was happy it was, at least, positively received.
My next article was a rip-off of SCP-5001. Don’t get me started. Sorry Yossi.
I then wrote SCP-5594 — Snail Racing to the End of Reaily. This was the introduction of my author avatar Paul Lague. I solely gave him that name so one of the emails could be from ten.pics|eugal.p#ten.pics|eugal.p in the article. HarryBlank later pointed out how it sounds like someone phonetically sounding out Plague like Pul-lague.
I wrote a few more mid-quality SCP articles until the Summer of 2020. I got my rhythm with SCP-5595. The article you see today in that slot is not the one that was posted. I’ve rewritten it twice since its original date. But, back in 2020 it was my first article to pass +50 and my first article to be featured on the front page thanks to REDESERT.
I joined the SCPDeclassified Discord at this time as well — probably two weeks before I posted SCP-5595. J Dune was an active member of that server, and someone I was determined to be friends with solely because I enjoyed his at-the-time recent articles of “Urgent Massage” and “Frankenstein Burger King.” We talked in the server, we critiqued each other’s articles, etc etc. Eventually, I had a draft that I wanted him to work with me on. I sent it to him and that became SCP-5787 — Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia, and became mine and Dune’s highest-rated article for a time and would later become our first article to hit +200 after a feature from Harry.
I began making closer friendships with people like Dune, Rounderhouse, Harry, Grigori, Ralliston, Jak, CadaverCommander, Dagon, AnActualCrow, Elenee Fishtruck, and Dysadron. My writing began improving as well. Upvotes mean little to me and most people as a measure of quality, but it does go to show how many people are reading and enjoying the things you are producing. On August 4th, 2020, I had a total of 173 upvotes with an average of 35 votes per article. By April of 2021, I had a total of +770 upvotes between 12 pages, with an average of 62 votes per article.
I established myself in 2021. I posted my first KCon entry with AnActualCrow and Dune which came in 11th place, I won MemeCon with Dune, I had a successful collaboration with Harry, Grigori, and Rounderhouse, I developed my canon and my characters, and I began to feel I finally got how to write for the Wiki’s audience. By April 2022, my upvote count quadrupled and my average doubled.
I failed. I failed six or seven times before I found something close to what I and others would consider success. There were times I was ready to throw in the towel and leave. I genuinely thought this wasn’t for me. I would see people who began posting around the same time I did like Harry and Dune, read their articles, and think that they just naturally had something I didn’t and I wasn’t cut to be in the creative environment.
This place takes work and it takes effort. Whether you’re a novice writer or a professional the SCP Wiki is consistently changing and you need to adapt to find the success you want to find here. I came into the Wiki with the wrong mindset. I jumped into the deep end because I thought that’s what everyone did and those that floated would float and those that didn’t would be gone.
