Meghan

The past week has been absolute emotional whiplash. Early last week I found out a friend from high school had passed away and a few days later, my uncle was admitted to the ICU with terrifying health issues. Things still aren’t great, but when the swelling went down on his brain his condition improved enough that we’re not constantly on edge.
          
          And then my laptop tried to die and I nearly lost all of my writing notes. Years of planning and a ton of collections of reference photos for both my fics and the book I’m hoping to publish. The chapters themselves are safe (I keep multiple backups for that) but pretty much the entire plot of my fics were in Word document calendars that were only on my hard drive. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world but it was one of those “last straw” moments. Forever thankful that my partner is a tech person and was able to get it back up and running.
          
          With that in mind, I haven’t gotten much writing done. I finally wrote like two paragraphs in Medically Speaking today and felt really proud of myself. We’re exhausted. I’m emotionally drained. The chapter is close to being finished but I just haven’t been able to focus on it. I’m working on it as much as I can, but other things have been taking precedence.

I wrote this out a few days ago and accidentally deleted it, so I gave up, lmao. Then I had three people ask about Medically Speaking yesterday so I’m going to try again.
          
          I’m working on the next chapter slowly but surely. It’s nowhere near done, but I haven’t forgotten y’all. I’m still pretty busy helping my parents out with their move, so things are moving slow. Word of advice, don’t wait 29 years to finally go through all your stuff, haha.
          
          Some housekeeping: in the next couple of days Wattpad will no longer have user to user private messaging. The most guaranteed way for me to see any message you want me to see is going to be on here either through profile messages or comments on my stories, but if you still prefer private messaging, my instagram (my.fanfic.soul) is going to be the easiest way. It will not be the fastest, though. I don’t follow people back on that account at this time so all new messages go into a requests folder and I haven’t been the best about checking it. Going forward, I’ll try to look at it once or twice a week.
          
          If you’re one of the people who found my tumblr account 1) I’m sorry lmao and 2) that’s not a great way to contact me. I don’t get notifications from there anymore and I only really check it when I accidentally open the app. 
          
          If you really don’t want to use another form of social media but don’t want a question or post to be easily visible by people coming to look for updates, I do have another Wattpad account, @sapphirecandlelight . I don’t currently have anything posted over there and don’t plan to anytime soon. I mostly use it to read one specific story and to check to make sure the notifications are going through on this account, so it may still be a few days before I see profile messages. I’d prefer for questions about updates to stay over here, but other questions or concerns are fine.

Thank you so much i really appreciate you trying with medically speaking thank you so so much

Just in case you missed it, I posted chapter 56 of Carolina Wren yesterday.
          
          Medically Speaking should be next, but I keep have to start over again. I tried writing TMoS, just to shake things up a bit, and I ended up having to start that one over again, too, lmao. So, Imposter Syndrome is alive and thriving but I'm working on it. Hopefully the wait isn't as long this time.

Stayed up way too late doing it, but the first round of editing is done for the next chapter of Carolina Wren. I'm so ready to get it posted. This is the last of the chapters that I started during NaNoWriMo. I'm hoping that I'll get it done in the next few days, but I've already had to make notes for things that need to change during the next edit.
          
          There's a few things in this chapter that I'm not convinced are coming up for the first time. The problem is that they're not easily searchable, I can't even begin to imagine where they would have come up so I can't follow my guide posts like I usually do, and I haven't been able to reread this fic without getting massively sidetracked in over a year. Sometimes I feel like my readers know my fic better than I do because I have hundreds of possible paths the storyline could have taken living in my head and sometimes I forget which ones I took, lmao.
          
          So we're just going to pretend that this is new for all of us. Please, lmao. I may cry if someone points out that it already came to light in chapter 36.
          
          I just checked. It does not show up in 36, haha.
          
          Thank you for being patient while I'm dealing with health and family crap. I really do appreciate it and all of you have been amazing.

Hello, I just wanted to stop over and say that I just finished reading what you had of  Carolina Wren and I absolutely love it and can’t wait to get more chapters! Do you have an idea of when that would be?

I hope you update medically speaking soon!! I'm starved honestly... Waiting and praying!!!!

Hope everything is well and that ur trip went great! Can't WAIT for t g e next update on any of ur stories!

In case you missed it, I posted chapter 12 of The Magic of Shadows last night. It has Owen being adorable and a couple of the Toma boys leading the charge on the Why Choose question. I do still think the second half is awkward but I also wrote it so I’ve read it half a million times and also, that last edit was a miracle. It used to be worse lmao.
          
          I’m over halfway through the next Carolina Wren chapter. I’m hoping that I can finish it and edit it before I leave next week, but that may be asking for another miracle a little too quickly. She does get a little snappy with them again, but they did ask for it, so there’s that.
          
          I know what most of you really want to know is the timeline for Medically Speaking and there isn’t one. I’ve officially run out of NaNo material so I’m going to be starting from zero words. I probably won’t start it until after we get back from the wedding.
          
          I hope everyone is enjoying the TMoS chapter and that you all have a great week!

I finished the first round of editing for the 12th chapter of The Magic of Shadows. I love and despise the chapter in equal measure because the second half is cringy. Sweet... but cringy. I tried fixing it. I really did, but it's just awkward by nature and I don't think there's much I can do about it, lmao. If this was traditional publishing, I'd probably come back and write this chapter later but with Wattpad, I have to post chronologically. 
          
          I feel obligated to add that the awkwardness of it is not what delayed me finishing it. I've been stressed about things happening in my life and I'm not really the type to write as a way to escape my stress in the moment. It was pretty unexpected on my end, so I had no way to prepare for it, which is why I didn't switch to Carolina Wren when I was struggling to finish this chapter. Although I did reread what I have of the next CW chapter and I honestly love it. Very excited to get back to it.
          
          A bit of housekeeping: I'll be off Wattpad for the last week of February for my brother's wedding. We have wedding stuff going on every day that we're there, so I'm going to be too busy to keep an eye on my comments and messages. I'll get back to everyone as soon as I can, but I may miss things. If you have questions, it's probably better to message me because I lose comments when I'm getting notifications for other things. I usually keep a close eye on things, but I'm also not usually in the mountains for a week. With my luck, that's when things would go off the rails.