It's done.

It's done!

This story is done! completely published!!!!

Firstly, I want to thank @ebearskittychan for allowing me all those years ago to use her light and dark pool idea. Andhelping me with Hoshi's name, since she is so much better at Japanese than me. Everyone should go read her Heroes of Dreamland books. They're amazing. I know I haven't heard from you in a while ebear, but thank you for being an inspiration for me to write. I hope you are having a wonderful adventure of your own somewhere.

Secondly, I want to thank @Hailey19525 and @Raiones for reading and voting on this story. I loved all the comments you left. Thank you so much. Honestly, these kinds of interactions are a highlight of my day.

This story was a struggle to write.

I started it after I finished Dawn's Light back in 2019.

I barely got any comments at the time and some of the few ones I did get were not positive. Mostly, they were comparing it to Dawn's Light.

At one point, I even deleted the story completely.

However, I promised myself I would finish it.

I work full-time and am working on my graduate degree, so my writing speed has definitely slowed.

I actually finished writing the story in October 2023. But it took me until June of 2023 to finish editing it. I actually finished it today as of writing this, June 16, 2024.

This story, due to the comments I got and other factors at the time, has been a hard one to finish. But it's been a story I've wanted to tell. It deserved to be finished.

At only 81,013 words, it's one of my shorter full-length stories, about 6,000 words shorter than The Liveship Paragon.

In November of 2023, the motherboard of my iPad, my primary writing device, failed. I lost everything that was not backed up. This story was thankfully backed up, as were a few others. To save my limited iCloud space, I had dozens of writing ideas saved on my non-iCloud notes app.

Gone, they were gone, with no way to restore them. I couldn't even get the device to turn on. It was basically a paperweight.

It took me until Jan 2024 to replace it. I still had my old college laptop to write on, but I don't often boot it up outside of schoolwork or story editing, since it works better with Grammarly.

As for my next story, I do not know.

I've thought about rewriting the story of my first OC, Vaga, from when I was twelve. She's still an important character to me. Maybe I'll write a story where she appears.

Though I kinda hate that I have more than a couple of in-progress stories, I do have five unfinished stories that I've been working on, bouncing between them. I usually only have two at most.

I will finish Shadows of the Past one day. I have no idea when that day will be. I have no idea when I will post again.

Due to the experiences from writing this story, I want to finish something before I start writing. I don't want to subconsciously tie my successes as a writer and drive to write to the votes and comments I get on a story. I don't want to feel bad when I can't consistently publish because I write at a snail's pace due to my schedule. Some days, I write a sentence at most. Other days a whole chapter. Sometimes I write a sentence a week. I can't keep up with the one-chapter-a-week schedule that I used to easily complete back in high school and college.

Wattpad has also changed a lot in the almost ten years I have been on the site. Between the buyout by Line Webtoon, the addition of ads, the loss of unlimited offline stories in the library, and the recent removal of DMs, this almost feels like a different app.

Most of the people in my writers' circle, both online and off, have stopped writing.

Even though I still talk to them, most of them don't write, at least not that I know. Sometimes, I feel alone, but I am working on accruing a new group of writer friends.

I guess I can list what I am currently working on. There's no guarantee any of these will be published anytime soon. But I want to keep writing. I enjoy it.

Dimensional Eclipse - a girl is on a journey to travel across her homeland, only to get dragged into a plot involving another dimension. Mysteries of history are unveiled with help from a traveler from the other dimension.

Shadows of the Past - A fanfiction of CrystalScherer's Upon Wings of Change with several chapters already published.

Dimensonet - A story about a world where the internet is its own dimension. A project to speed up internet connections accidentally turns into a quest to save both the physical and digital dimensions.

Lifelight - A college student sacrifices herself to save a boy from getting run over and gets a chance to reincarnate in a new, magical world. The only catch? She is an ambassador of good, tasked with spreading positive energy.

The Floating Isles - Separated from the world on a floating archipelago, dragons live believing they are the last dragon society to survive the dragon wars that brought extinction to their kind. A young dragon, on a dare, flies into the storm and crash lands on the surface, the lands his ancestors escaped.