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Edits – Support – Writing Hangover

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Photo credit: StartupStockPhotos on Pixabay.

Hey guys, welcome back! It’s been a busy time and as I type this, I’m looking at the screen through tired eyes. While many are out enjoying their Summers at pools and vacations, I’ve been writing for hours upon hours each night. And you know what? I’m loving every minute of it!

Last night alone, I typed for six hours straight and with hands that are affected by arthritis, it was an exercise in determination. (Also, shoutout to the makers of painkillers. You guys rock!)

I’m in the final third of the book and have been having lots of issues with both story and character development. I’ve strayed quite a bit from the original feel of the book. However, the way it has progressed? Has now given me the basis for a future novel. NEVER THROW YOUR WORK AWAY! Just because what I’ve written doesn’t fit with the current story, doesn’t mean it won’t be good for a new one with new characters. Sometimes you just need to write it out. Get the thoughts out of your head so you can move on to the rest. While doing that, this past week alone, I have almost three chapters worth of material that I can use for a future project. I just wish I knew where this storyline came from because it was completely out of the blue.

Anyway, I’ve been writing and rewriting, changing chapter after chapter and also rereading what I’ve already done to make sure that everything flows. It is vital for me that I do this as I have memory issues. But also for continuity’s sake, it is so important that I keep reading this work over and over. I keep finding areas that need work and unfortunately, big chunks that now need to be cut. I wrote 42 pages over two days and looking over them tonight, there is so much that cannot be used. I have no idea where my mind was going with what I wrote, but again, at least it’s out of my head. And as you can probably see, I am so tired right now, I’m talking in circles. I do believe that the tired has infiltrated my story and is helping to take my characters to a place that they were never destined to go.

I’ve said before and I will say it again, these characters mean the world to me. I’ve created a place I look forward to going to every night. There’s pieces of me in each one and they deserve my best. However I am feeling lately that I am not giving it to them and I need to reel myself back in and get back to the foundation of this book and what I started to do with it. The early chapters came so damned easily to me and keeping the flow of it as I get to these later ones is proving to be the true challenge. It is one that I am up to though and I will make this the best work that I possibly can do.

I have found great support with the writing community slash #booktok community on TikTok. When other writers post about the struggles they are going through with their own characters and plot lines, it makes me feel better knowing I’m not the only one dealing with these issues. It’s like having access to a support group from my home and I’m so grateful to all of them for being there. I’ve tried to do the same, posting videos with some kind of message here and there, thanks to the new five hashtag limits though, my views have gone to almost nonexistent. I’m still there though and happy to be a part of that community. After all, creatives help creatives and that is what I hope I am doing here with this blog. 😉

In the words of the immortal Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.

Remember, if you are looking for reading suggestions for the rest of your Summer and beyond, be sure to hit the ‘On the Bookshelf 2025’ page. I’ll be adding to it all the time. I’ve been on a great reading roll myself and will once again be participating in the Read Every Day Challenge for the American Cancer Society and I’ll put the link below if you’d like to donate. It’s a very personal cause for me being a survivor myself as well as having many family members affected by it. If a donation isn’t in your budget right now? (Which I totally get btw.) You can certainly join in the challenge yourself! It’s of course free to join and it is such an important cause.

And that is where I will leave you for today. Thank you as always for following along with my insanity and tired ramblings. No matter what your creative outlet is, remember to just keep going. Even if something doesn’t fit, even if something comes out wonky, it doesn’t matter. Just keep doing what you are doing and keep being the best you that you can be. 🩷

Until next time…

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On the Bookshelf 2025

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New Chapter Cove on TikTok/#booktok: Click HERE

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My donation page for the Read Every Day Challenge for the ACS can be found HERE

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To keep up with all of my social, shops and more: linktr.ee/promosocially

Revising, Rethinking and Lots of Rewriting

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Hey guys, welcome back! It’s a dark and stormy night here in New England and that for me means, lots of reading and writing! I love rainy nights, days, weeks, for just this reason. Plus, it holds the oppressive heat at bay so that’s always a bonus.

I’ve been kind of losing my mind lately with the progress of my book. I wrote myself into a hole of crap that I now am trying to fix. If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that this current novel that I have been working on has been really flowing. I was on a role writing a chapter a night and the story has been going great. And then…

I hit a chapter with a pivotal plot point. One that is taking much more research than I thought it would. As I’m working on that, there is another aspect that I also need to do some follow up on and in the meantime, the rest of the story wants to come out! Yes folks, I’ve hit that point where I yell at my screen at least once an evening now.

I’ve rewritten full chapters, cutting scenes that I really thought would work but now see that they would be better in future pages. Lots of cutting and pasting to rework what’s already been written which, by the way, is another reason why I save each chapter separately. This way I can rework them individually without having to scroll through the entire manuscript. Still, it’s been hard to change what I thought were great pages.

Like others who write, this book has become such a part of me. I dream about it. I work scenes in my head like a movie and even as I talk to people, the next chapter is playing out in my mind over and over again until I can get it written. I feel like I owe it to these characters to give them my best and damned if I’m not going to give it to them!

Is this a public pep talk to myself? Maybe. But when it’s now been months and reams of paper have been printed with chapter after edited chapter, I need to keep myself on track. I lost several days of writing last week when I was stuck, blocked and basically up against a wall. Plus, I was reading a book that I never wanted to put down and once it was over, it stuck with me deeply and I couldn’t get my own story back in my head for two days. So here I am, putting this out there…all creatives will get to this point. That time where there is a pause in the flow of our work. Where there will be a blip in how we think and a time where we constantly curse at ourselves while we try to get it back.

For me, stepping back last week was good. I had been taking the book in the wrong direction. Not saying it wouldn’t have worked the way it was going, but it wasn’t where I wanted this story to go. It was like writing an alternative universe for these characters. Sure it would have been a bit spicier, but I’m writing a romcom not a Fifty Shades kind of book and that’s when I knew stepping back was needed. (However, if I do decide to write something steamier in the future? I’ve kept those scenes in another document, just in case. Throw nothing away.)

Maybe the Summer is affecting me, who knows. As I sit here and type this, waiting for Fall and my first PSL of the season, my characters are trying to keep me in the moment. It’s really a good thing I have no life or else this wouldn’t get written at all! 😂

Anywhoo, this is where I’m going to leave you for today. I hope this resonates with you on some level. If it doesn’t, that means I’m just losing it. But hey, thank you for letting me lose it here! 

Until next time…keep enjoying your Summers!

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For my socials, including my new #booktok you can find all of my links: 

linktr.ee/promosocially

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To read one of the best books I’ve ever written, The Things We Left Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros: click HERE

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I’m happy to announce that I’m now a PangoBooks ambassador! Use my link to get $5 off of your your first purchase and get some great books at super low prices! My first order with them, I found two brand new books for less than $1.50 each! Click my link to get started: https://pangobooks.com/NEWCHAPTERCOVE

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If you’ve gotten this far, thanks so much. You guys rock!! 🙂

Rereading, Spice and Tone Change

/ ccsocialcreative / 2 Comments
Photo credit: StockSnap on Pixabay.

Hey guys, welcome back! I hope you all had a great weekend. It was an interesting one around here with fireworks and a brief blackout, but hey, that’s Summer, amiright?

Quick update, I have added a new page to the site: 2025 On the Bookshelf If you missed the Summer reading post, it contains the books I mentioned there and more and will be updated as I continue to add those that I’m reading throughout the year. Hope you’ll check it out if you are looking for reading recs or Prime Day goodies. (Remember that Prime Days have now begun and run from July 8th-11th. You can find my associate links around the site and on the bookshelf page as well.)

So now that’s out of the way, let’s get to this!

I’m once again rereading my manuscript because somewhere in the last two weeks, the tone of the story has really gone off the rails. What started out as a romcom that I’d hoped the legendary Nora Ephron would approve of, suddenly went to a more serious and darker place I wasn’t expecting. Not to mention, it also got a bit, let’s say, ‘spicier’ than I was going for.

So it was time to take a major step back. I tried rewriting chapters and found that I kept ending up in the same place. I’m chalking it up to the Summer heat finally frying my brain and a few juicy books I’ve read in the past few months. However, for this particular book, I had never planned on it going in that direction.

I’ve decided to put those new chapters aside, maybe rework them for a future project that is leaning more towards that particular genre, but for this book? I want to keep it lighter, funnier, more romance and less smut. Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of spice, but seriously, my mind went to a place that even I didn’t know it could go. So maybe this whole therapy thing needs to be looked at again? Who knows. At least I started to see the shift change before I wrote any more so I could put a stop to it.

Thus, the rereading.

Going back to my earlier chapters has been great for me. Not only am I finding editing errors, I’m also finding where I can combine my much shorter chapters into larger ones. So numerically, I’m not as far along as I thought I once was, but flow wise, it will read much better. I’m also finding the humor again which is what I really needed to do. 

This particular story does have a deeper backstory and one that I think needs a voice. So I have no issues with having a slight bit of a darker reality behind it. However, when the entire story started to take a more dramatic route, I knew it needed to be changed. When you as the author winces at your own work? It’s time to take a step back.

I’ll be honest, I have trouble with criticism. Of any kind. But with my writing? I get instantly defensive and either get angry or curl up into a ball…it’s just a reflex. Reading and rereading my own work these past two weeks, I’ve been criticizing myself like crazy. How could I let the story go this way? What the hell made me go to the dark side? Why would I ever have a character do that when I have never established any such behavior from them during their development? As harsh as I have been on myself, I can at least look at my writing through fresh eyes as I reread these chapters. Why? Because as I read them, they don’t even read as if I wrote them! So I feel like I am critiquing someone else’s work.

By the way, this is a reason why I don’t do reviews. I hate getting anything of mine reviewed, so I won’t do it to someone else. I will only share what I like. If I don’t like something? You won’t see it. Anywhere. Here, my social media, whatever. But if I like something, I’ll throw a post onto my #booktok or add it to my bookshelf page. Artists of all kinds from sculptors to musicians to writers and beyond put their hearts and souls into their work. To criticize them to me, (and me only here), can feel very personal. So I try to keep it more positive by sharing the stuff I really enjoy.

Anywhoo, back to my book for a quick moment…I am now halfway through the reread and it has really been helping me get the story back on track. I’ve taken more notes in the past week of new story ideas than I have in a month, so hey, maybe I’m onto something here! After all, this project has certainly been going faster than I would have thought. It’s a story I have been excited about getting out there. I’ve also been waiting for the other shoe to drop. One that will slow me down, block me from moving forward and lo and behold, I hit it.

Whatever you are working on, take the time to go over it constantly. Then go over it again to keep the flow going, the continuity, the voice. Make sure you are keeping with the vision that you’ve had for it all along. Sure there is room for change, maybe your vision has also been altered. Just make sure you are doing it in a way that will make YOU proud. I’m not saying that the darker stuff I wrote wasn’t going to work. In fact, in some ways, this book could totally go in that direction. It’s just not what I wanted for these characters, so I’m going to stick with the original plan. It’s what’s best for myself and for this work. (Then maybe, I’ll add the spicier stuff to the next one.) 😉

And that is where I’m going to leave you for today! Thanks as always for following along my strange journey and hope that you are getting something out of my rambles.

Be sure to check out my links below and on the site and until next time…cheers all!

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You can find the new 2025 On the Bookshelf page in the main menu or click here.

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To follow me on social, including my new #booktok account, click: linktr.ee/promosocially

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To subscribe to this site with your email, be sure to hit the ‘Follow NewChapterCove’ button on this page.

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If you’ve gotten this far, thanks again and see you soon!! ☺️

Plot Betrayal, Extended Research and June was Hot

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Photo credit: StartupStockPhotos on Pixabay

Hey guys, welcome back! I am in shock that June is over. I mean, is it just me or did you also just blink and it was done? As someone who feels that Summer is the equivalent of living on the surface of a volcano while eating razor blades, the faster these months go the better. (Basically, I need Fall, I need Fall now!) Even though this is my least favorite time of the year, I can usually deal with it. With my very odd schedule of sleeping during the day, I miss most of the heat. However, my AC this year has decided to only churn out the minimal amount of coolness and I’m currently sitting in a room with both the AC and a fan on and it is still 84 degrees. But I digress…(sorry, just needed to get that out). 😬

This past week I’ve run into the proverbial wall that I’ve been afraid would come for some time. If you’ve been following along here, you know that my writing has been going pretty smoothly so far. I’ve gotten into a routine, a rhythm, a wonderful flow of typing, creating this story of mine and I’ve been so happy with it. And then…

I hit a chapter that is important to the plot. Like, super important to the plot. I wrote it out, let it get out of my head and then went on to the next. After I put everything away for the day to get ready for bed, that one chapter was replaying in my mind. I didn’t like how it panned out and the thing is, a good portion of the next chapter very much depends on the bad one.

So, ok. That night I went in and reread it. I could see where it went off the rails. I make a copy of it, (I write each chapter individually for just such an occasion) and rewrite much of the thing. Go on to write the next two and ok, I think I’ve got it under control. I usually print out a chapter after two edits but kept this one off to the side for now because I was excited about where the rest of the story was going.

In the back of my mind though, that one plot point was just not doing it for me. If it was a case of it being a sort of side story or one for a secondary character, I could forgive much of it for now and continue on. However, this is a crucial storyline and one that needs to be told with accuracy.

This has been added to the routine. I need time each night now to research how this scenario should play out. Granted, I normally love, LOVE researching anything. But I painted myself into a corner with this one. A ‘said in passing’ character trait early on, has now become important to the story as a whole. The problem here is that it is not something that I am knowledgeable about and therefore, my search history is now one that is unrecognizable to me.

By the way, I’d like to mention how hard it is to talk about this without giving anything away! I’m trying so hard not to reveal anything about my book, so to talk in generics is proving to be quite a challenge.

I recently started a booktok (under NewChapterCove) and have started to follow a number of authors. Not just to support them, but to also see if I’m alone with a lot of my journey. I saw a post yesterday where this particular writer said something about how he looks at his screen funny when his character does something he wasn’t planning on. I COULDN’T AGREE MORE! My characters have taken on a life of their own and for the most part, I run with it. But now here I am, over 40 chapters in now and scrambling to figure out this one scene that I just need to move past to get on with my life.

Which of course means that this has become my panic chapter. That chapter in a book where the reader goes, “seriously? This is where it’s going?” Said with all the sarcasm that one could muster btw. Which of course, is a nightmare for any author.

With this happening, I’ve decided to put it aside for now. I have so many other things I’d rather be writing, the next few ‘days’ in the story that I want to continue with and can’t rewrite that one nightmare chapter until the rest of this is out of my head. Only then, will I be able to rewrite the sequence of events to have this all make sense and fit with the rest of the story. Or so I hope.

So this is where I am now. With these now higher chapters, I’m still trying to work out how this will wind down even though I really don’t want this book to ever end. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing it and it has also become a special escape for me every night. The thought of extending it to a sequel or series to keep it going is still up in the air right now. I can’t think that far ahead until I can work out this rather brazen plot betrayal of mine.

And that is where I will leave you for today. I thank you so much for reading and following along with my slight freak out and hope that if you are celebrating the 4th of July, that it is fun and most of all safe! (Leave the doggies at home too. Fireworks are the leading cause of the most lost dogs of the year.)

Until next time folks…be good, be kind, be you!

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If you’ve gotten this far, I thank you and will see you next time!

No Sleep, Character Obsession and Just Kept Writing

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Photo credit: xaviandrew on Pixabay.

Hey guys, welcome back! I hope you all got to see the bonus post I did filled with Summer Reading ideas. If not, it can be found in the ‘new posts’ tab, I’l also link it below this post. I am planning to put it up as part of the On the Bookshelf page as well as I’ve been really neglecting the rest of the site this year as far as updated pages. Also, please note that my links show up on this site in a darker color. They are (unfortunately?) not as defined as other sites.

Anywhoo, let’s get the post at hand, shall we?

Just going to say it, I haven’t been sleeping. Part of it is because it’s hotter than the sun here in the Northeast these days (and other places as well) and my AC is struggling to keep things cool. I mean, 90 degrees inside isn’t exactly cooling things off. I did treat myself to some Gatorade so hey, living the dream!

The lack of sleep has had me writing a whole lot. I have the house to myself this week and with my odd sleep schedule of staying up and night and sleeping during the day, I decided the other day to see how long I could go just writing.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve developed a pretty regular routine. To give you an idea (read:recap) of how screwed up my schedule is: I always start by reading the previous night’s work and editing as I go. This usually begins around 4am. At 5am I’m most likely done and then I write the new stuff until about 7:30-8am or until I finish a chapter. I type very quickly, so a chapter can sometimes only take me two hours or a little more. For a little perspective though, some of my chapters are short at only 11 pages or so. I take a lot of meds because of medical issues and I need stuff to help me sleep. Sometimes I will take something about an hour into writing so that I can fall asleep by 9-10am. (Boring you yet? Sorry)

The problem with this a lot of times, is that I’m just getting into the story or getting more ideas for where the story can go just as the sleep stuff kicks in. Then I’m stuck replaying it all in my head making it hard to get any actual sleep. Again, I have the place to myself and had nowhere to go the other day. So I decided to try something and not to take anything. To see how long I could keep going with the story. To just keep writing.

When I finished what is a very pivotal chapter, I went to do a page count and I had typed out 31 pages! I started at around 5am and went until 1pm. I just kept writing.

Will I keep a lot of it? Will the chapter be broken up into two? Is any of it good? Well, that’s what editing is for! But to know that I could keep going like that proved to me that I’d like to try doing this more often. That stifling the creativity just as it gets rolling may not be the way to go. And yes, I have tried starting earlier than 4am. It didn’t stick.

This story has really consumed me. Suddenly, scenes I hadn’t really planned on putting in, are taking over and I’ve been surprised at how they fit into the story as a whole. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that this new book is being written in the first person. The main character has invaded my thoughts and when I put everything away at ‘bedtime’, the story continues in my head like a movie. I will lay there trying to clear my head, only to sit back up and write stuff in the notebook I keep near my bed so I don’t forget anything later on. Yet still, the storyline keeps playing in my head like this week’s Netflix trailers.

There’s also a few things I keep going over, especially now that I’m 36 chapters in. Do I change things up? Do I throw in a major surprise? Is it time to start thinking of this as a series rather than a standalone book? I’ve created some characters and a location that has become so real to me now and that has become a great escape for me that frankly, I don’t want to leave it. But that’s me. What will readers think?

These are the things that are now starting to keep me up at night. That and a whole lot of heat.

And that is where I will leave you for today. I’m sorry if this one wasn’t too exciting but as I’ve said before, sometimes I just need to get out the thoughts so I can move on with my life. 😂

I very much appreciate your hanging out with me for a little bit. I hope you are staying cool and hydrated and that if you like it here, you’ll share this site with your friends.

Thanks again and until next time…

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It’s Summer Reading Time! <—Summer reading inspiration by yours truly.

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Find my social (including TikTok), shops and more: linktr.ee/promosocially

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If you like what I do here and would like to help support this site, you can click the Ko-Fi link on this page.

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Thank you for getting this far and see you next time!! 🥰