Manuscript

Heatwave – Chronic Illness – A-ha Moment

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Photo credit: me 🙂

Hey guys, welcome back! Hope everyone has been hanging in there with the heat, wherever you are. Here in the Northeast, we are gearing up for a long stretch of brutally high temps and I’m already counting down the days to my first pumpkin spice latte.

If you know me at all, or have been following along, you may know that I am not a summer person. Ok, so that is putting it lightly. I hate this time of the year. Having said that however, the last few years, I’ve been learning to embrace it a bit more. I think I even remember enjoying the last few summers! (Go figure.)

This year though, I’m just trying to get through it. Not being someone for hot weather, it is already gearing up for a long season. I’ve been escaping into books as usual and have a line of holiday themed ones ready for Chrismas in July escapism. I’ve already seen back to school ads on tv and I will be looking for the first fall catalogs to come in the mail after the 4th of July, which always gets me through.

Now I know a lot of you out there are rolling your eyes and that’s fine. I do the same when I hear the complaints about cold weather and the holiday ads coming way too soon. So I get it. What many don’t understand though isn’t just that I’m not a fan of the summertime, it’s a difficult season when you live with chronic illnesses.

When I was younger, I had a lot of fun in the summer. Vacations or cookouts with friends, it was all good. When I got sick just under 10 years ago, the hot weather started to wreak havoc with the pain that I deal with on a 24/7 basis. You see, I have what some call ‘invisible disabilities.’ Meaning, you wouldn’t know to look at me that I have a whole lot going on.

Between pain and breathing issues, it has taken a toll on me. If you’ve been following along here, you know that I started my latest setback last August. I missed out on my favorite time of the year because of it. (September-New Year) So here we are in summer once again and I was JUST starting to pull out of this setback. I’ve been a little more active. I’ve been able to help out more, doing such trivial tasks as taking the garbage to the other side of our complex and grocery shopping. Yes, I’ve even had fun at the grocery store. I mean come on, they play good music there now!

With the heat though, comes a little backslide. The pain increases, sleep is hit and miss. I’m either completely passed out or up for a day or two. Add humidity to the mix and my breathing is shot to hell. And to add insult to injury? My bedroom AC died and I’m dealing with a room that got up to 97 during the last time the temps rose. This time I’m trying a few different things to get the room cooler, just call me MacGuyver!

I’ll get off of this subject in a second, just wanted to say, if you know someone who deals with illness of any kind, be sure to check up on them. Make sure they are ok. Be sympathetic if they are having a tough time or keep canceling plans on you. There just might be a reason they do that and that reason could be that the heat is giving them a harder time than they usually have. Enough of the soapbox, let’s get back to the regular stuff…

During one of my sleepless nights, or in my case, days, I suddenly had an idea about how to cut a shitton of words in my manuscript! It would help cut my word count by a whole lot and bring about a deeper part of the storyline that has been lacking. Now I just have to write it.

With ADHD comes a lot of doing everything but doing what I’m supposed to do. So after I had this remarkable revelation on how to fix my book, I did what any other writer would do. I read a book, did some laundry, cleaned the bathroom, binge watched 9-1-1, edited previously edited chapters. Now it has been two days since I figured out how to fix this story bridge and I have yet to rewrite the section.

The one great thing about this, is that I know I’m not alone. I’ve befriended a lot of writers on the internet and we all do the same thing. We do anything but what we are supposed to be doing, ADD or not. It’s in the author’s DNA to postpone the work. Thankfully, I’m not on a deadline. Actually, if I was, I’d do it last minute like I always did in school. (At least stuff got done.) Having no deadline means I can take my time to make this right. Or binge more Chicago Fire when my brain decides to take a vacation.

The point here is, I’ve figured it out. The execution of it? Hopefully I’ll have better news on that front in a future post.

In the meantime, for those celebrating, Happy 4th of July. For those beating the heat? KEEP HYDRATED. And for those sticking with me throughout all of this? I thank you greatly!

Until next time folks…cheers!!

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To follow me on social, including my #booktok and to shop my new Amazon storefront as well as my other shops, click: HERE

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

Thinking about milestones…

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Photo by me. 🙂

Hey guys, welcome back! It’s the weekend and feeling more Fall-like here in the northeast than the last weekend of May. (Which is just fine with this Fall loving girl!)

Over the last two weeks, there’s been a few milestones happening in both my life and those around me. This weekend alone, both my mother and one of my closest friends hit milestone birthdays. (You know, the kind with a zero at the end of the number?) Of course both act decades younger than they are, so there’s that. 😬

The other milestone that happened was that I have actually cut over 100,000 words in my manuscript! With the average submission word count requested being between 80-130,000, I’ve literally cut an entire book from my book.

It boggles the mind that I wrote well over 400,000 words in a matter of months, let alone now trying to edit those words down into a story that makes sense after those cuts. But the fact that I’ve done this much makes me realize that I’ve done a lot more work than it feels like I have.

Let’s face it…when doing a task for a good length of time, after a while it can feel as if you’ve been standing still and not making any progress at all. When I decided to run the numbers after the fourth edit was complete last week, I was in shock. However, I was also so happy that I decided to run those numbers. I’ve been so frustrated thinking that I’m just not getting anywhere at all. Turns out, I really have been making a difference. Even if it’s just been 10 words here, a paragraph there. Inch by inch, I really have been productive. It was the first time I let out a deep breath in a long time.

Now on my fifth edit, I stalled a little again when another story came into my head. Thankfully, this is not just my own problem. I’ve been in touch with other authors who deal with this as well. (Always good to talk to others who are on a similar path for just such support.) So I started writing that one down, am now six chapters in and now that it’s cleared my head out a bit, I can now get back to the task at hand. I’ve worked too damned hard over this past year+ to just abandon this book.

I also have another completed book that I need to edit. That one, oh boy, that one means so much to me and I would love to get that book out as soon as I can. But just as this post has become a stream of ramblings, imagine what is inside my head and why I can’t do just one thing at a time.

Dealing with attention issues is a part of my journey. Thankfully I’ve started to work on that to help my focus and try to compartmentalize what I need to get done. Is it working? Eh, still trying. At least I’ve been able to recognize what needs to be done and how I can take the steps to continue down this road I’ve started on.

In the meantime, I thank you for letting me use this as a kind of therapy session. If you take nothing else from this post, I hope you take this…keep going. Even if it feels as if you’re not making progress? You are. Sometimes even the smallest steps can move you forward.

And that is where I will leave you for today. Until next time folks…cheers!

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To follow me on social, including #booktok and to check out my shops (you can even shop in this link as well), click: HERE

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If you’d like to check out the links on this site to shop or if you’d like to help support New Chapter Cove through my Ko-fi link, you can click on the logo.

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If you’ve gotten this far, I thank you so much and will see you soon! 🌸

Stuck – Stuck – Oh Yeah, Stuck!

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Hey guys, welcome back and welcome to March! We’ve made it through the dredges of the Winter months and Spring is on the horizon. Of course there is still lots of unpredictable weather ahead and I’m fine with it. I love a good stretch of dark, rainy weather. But then, I’m a vampire and am not too fond of sunlight.

Anywhooooo….been trudging along with stuff and trying to find the humor in the everyday nonsense that is life. After all, if we do not do this, we would spontaneously combust and really, who has the time for that?

The one area where my humor is currently lacking is my book. No not in the content, after all, I have it pegged as a romcom (albeit with some serious undertones), but with the execution. I mentioned in previous posts that I’ve found a solution to my word cutting issue. Well, that has since gone out the window.

My solution so far this week has been to try and clear my head a bit. Watch more meditation and ASMR videos (yes, I love ASMR, so relaxing) and recently I’ve found someone on YouTube who deals with art therapy. Using different art techniques to focus on the task at hand to clear your mind up for other things. I love this idea as I used to create things to do just that. Refocus my energy to open myself up to new ideas.

I do this a lot while I’m making dinner or in the shower or even reading. Suddenly an idea comes to me and it’s the eureka moment I crave. I’ve thought of many plot lines while doing other things. In fact, over the weekend I came up with another story idea and had to get it out of my head. I ended up writing two chapters of it which actually felt great as I’ve greatly missed the writing part of writing. However, it didn’t help me with the task at hand.

Anyway, when I got into this rut of just reading my manuscript over and over and not coming up with something that would help me, having this artist woman say exactly what I used to say to myself? It was like a mini eureka moment. I mean, how have I not been doing this? It’s my pattern after all! When I used to make jewelry, I’d come up with so many ideas for other things. When I design a new card or sticker or bookmark for my creative business, I become clear headed about life stuff. However, sometimes it takes an outsider to give you that virtual slap against your head to jiggle your brain into action. Now I just need to find that trigger that lets me know how to get from point A to point B in my book.

In the meantime, I’ve been revisiting some other small business owners’ socials that I’ve followed for a while to learn how to create new products and how to integrate certain things into the shops that I have now. I’m thinking that this incredible bout of editor’s block may end up helping me in other ways. I just really, REALLY want to finish this book.

If you’ve been following me, you know of my passion for this work of mine. I love it. I really do. And I think the fact that my mind won’t get off the endgame of it…having it published and in the readers’ hands…is now more of a distraction than motivation. As someone who has trouble with focus, I need to get back to the motivation of it.

So here I am, hoping that by writing this post and getting my worries out into the universe, my mind will clear up even more and I will suddenly get the revelation that I so greatly need. Because I know it’s there. I can see it off in the distance waiting for me. Now I just need to figure out the best way to find it.

And that is where I will leave you for today. I know that most posts, I try to leave you with a bit of motivation. I really strive for that and do hope you got something from this post as a whole. However, every now and then, a ramble such as this just needs to be let out and I thank you for being here to read these ramblings.

Until next time…cheers!

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To follow me on social including my #booktok, click: HERE

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To find my creative shops, click: HERE

(You’ll also find my StuffWeFind link to my eBay listings on there as well where I sell vintage and estate jewelry.)

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If you’d like to help support this site, you can shop though any of the Amazon links, you find around here or head to my Ko-Fi (click logo on the page) click: HERE

Slackin’ – Distractions – Snow Days

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Photo credit: fotostart on Pixabay.

Hey guys, welcome back! So sorry that I missed last week, but I gotta tell you, it’s been a time. However, it’s good to be here and hope you haven’t given up on me! (I know, I’ve been saying that a lot lately. Oops.) I also hope that this year has been treating you well so far! 

Anywhoo, with all the life stuff of both dr appointments and medical tests, I’ve just been kind of…here. Whatever this illness is that I have (that still has not been diagnosed as of yet), it’s just making me tired all the time. I have no energy, I just want to sleep nonstop and yet I have trouble actually going to sleep. My hours, which were never ‘normal’ to begin with, have gotten way off the charts. However, life goes on and so do I!

I have, of course, been working on my book. I am on yet another re-read and I have so many ideas now of how to condense the original story into something that get me  within the word count I need to submit it somewhere. The problem unfortunately then goes back to the previous paragraph. The more I think about what I want to do with the book, the lack of energy I have at the moment is holding the actual new writing back. Every night I sit and read through a few chapters, edit more and then mentally drift off somewhere else. In other words, I get so lost in the reading of the story, that when it comes time to change things around, I just kind of sit there.

To say it has been discouraging is an understatement. The last read through I did, I made so much progress. I had rewritten chapters and cut thousands more words and felt like I was really making a lot of progress. Now here I am, at chapter thirty-something again and I think last night, all I did was change some grammar and an apostrophe. Woo-hoo.

I’m trying not to get down about it. I just don’t want to lose the momentum and excitement I’ve had. I lost a few days of not working on it at all a couple of weeks ago and I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again. I’ve been working so hard on this since last April. Now here we are, with January almost over in this new year and while I’m not physically working on the book in front of me, I’ve been dreaming about where I want the story to go, how I want it to read and came up with new paths for the characters to go. 

Of course, getting all of this from my thoughts to the page is something completely different. Keeping me focused instead of flaking out is a challenge and it takes nothing to get me distracted these days.

Speaking of distractions…how about this snow huh? Ok so maybe it hasn’t snowed where you are. But here in the Northeast, the snow/frigid winter we’ve been having has been reminding us that Mother Nature is indeed in charge of things. Personally, I love snow. Even though my hatred of the month of January is well known, I still love snow. It makes everything magical and even though I am nowhere near school age anymore, I still look for the school closings like a kid. I don’t think that will ever leave me either. I used to love snow days as a kid. Meeting my friends at the park to go sledding or have massive snowball fights. Of course the walk back home was always rough. All the enthusiasm of the day was replaced by cold, wet clothes and having to walk uphill to my house with a sled was brutal. But there was always hot cocoa waiting for me and layers of blankets to snuggle under.

During this past storm, I sat with both the book I was reading and my keyboard to work on my own book, a hot cup of tea and watched as the snow poured down on us. I was up in the early morning hours as I always am and it was so peaceful and quiet, that for a bit, I forgot I was doing anything and just watched it come down. There was no noise. No sounds of the nearby highway that I’ve become so used to. No sounds of people starting their cars to go to work. No kids trudging early to school. Nothing. Just complete and blissful silence that let me hear the occasional snowflake hit my window.

Snow muffles life. Not just the sounds, but it literally halts our daily routine. I may not go outside a whole lot anymore, but it still brought me to a standstill watching it. It made me take a break. Made me sit back and reflect and for a little bit, also make me just let my mind go blank as I watched the flakes come down. I love trying to focus on one particular snowflake as it descends from the sky. Trying to see if I can follow it all the way down to its landing place. Not just because I find it hypnotizing, but also because for a brief shining moment, I don’t have to think about anything. I can just be.

Snow quieting our world is a great metaphor for what we all need to do now and then. While everything else in life is happening, we all need to take a step back now and then and just quiet ourselves. Many can do it when they are going to sleep. I am not one of those people. I am the kind that replays everything that has ever happened in her life just before it’s time to close her eyes. So to sit and watch the snow fall, it was like erasing my mind for a bit.

No amount of meditations or ASMR videos on YouTube could do what a half hour of watching the snow the other morning did for me. A complete clearing of the mind. A reset if you will. Now I just need it to snow every day…or have Fall leaves falling from the trees. I’ll take either. (Although I’ll always like Fall best.)

And that is where I will leave you for today. Thanks for putting up with me as always and I apologize again for skipping more than a week of posting. I’m still here and still trying to entertain, well, I hope I’m entertaining! Hate to think I’ve lost my touch!! 🙂

Until next time…cheers!!!

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To follow me on social including my #booktok and to shop for some goodies: linktr.ee/promosocially

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Looking for a Valentine’s present? Not too late! For my vintage and estate jewelry listings on eBay: linktr.ee/stuffwefind

For lots of fun stuff all designed by me: linktr.ee/stuffwemade

You can also shop the links I have posted all around the site here, including the sidebar with some Amazon links.

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If you’d like to help support the site, you can hit the Ko-Fi logo or click HERE

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If you’ve made it this far, I thank you and will see you soon!! ☺️

Trying – Sleeping – Random Inspiration

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Photo credit: Yamu_Jay on Pixabay

Hey guys, welcome back. I know, I know, I’ve already missed a week and it’s only the first two weeks of the new year. Well, life is crazy stuff sometimes and that is what it is for me right now.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I’ve been sick for many months. Well, it continues and right now, we are still trying to figure out what is going on. I’ve had more dr appointments and this week I’ve got more tests to get. In the meantime, my sleep schedule is even more erratic that it already was. I slept through the holidays, literally. I slept all Christmas Day and New Year’s days and then three days after, only being up for a few hours here and there. I slept almost this entire past weekend and trying to stay awake is a real fight. However, I’m still here!

With all of this being said, I’m trying so hard to stay focused on my book. The waking hours I do have, I dedicate to both reading and editing my manuscript. (And streaming Brooklyn Nine-Nine, because the show makes me laugh out loud.)

As dedicated as I’ve been, I actually went days without touching the book. That doesn’t happen and it bothers me that it did. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t open it up to read it, I just couldn’t go near it. When I can’t work on it? That’s when I know that I can officially say, I’m not well.

I am happy to say though that the time I have put into it? I’ve cut almost 4000 more words! I’ve been cutting full pages, full paragraphs and reworking/rewriting the story so that it will embrace the time of year I’ve switched it to which has been fun.

I’m still trying desperately hard to figure out just how to keep so much of what I’ve written, without having to break this particular origin story in two. I’ve talked about making this a series in the past, but I really want a lot of what is already done to be a part of this first book. The stress I’m putting myself through about it though, needs to stop. Can’t afford that right now. So as I get through this latest read through and cut and cut and cut, I remind myself that yes, I can indeed put some of this into it’s sequel and to calm the hell down. (I yell at myself a lot when I’m working…sometimes I wonder what my neighbors think is going on over here.)

I think one of the best things I’ve done to help the editing process along has been taking it ten chapters at a time. Honestly, it gives me such a sense of accomplishment when I’m done with a set of ten and seeing just how much I’ve cut from them. How much I’ve changed them. Doing it all as a full document was making it rather overwhelming. Doing it in stages? Well, I should have been doing it this way all along!

Someone on a video I watched on YouTube once said, ‘if you are feeling overwhelmed by a task, try breaking it down into small pieces.’ Well damned if they weren’t right about that! I couldn’t recommend this process more. This is my second time going through the book doing the ten at a time method and it has helped tremendously and I’ll continue to do it this way until I get it just the way I want it.

Whether it’s a video on YouTube or talking to a friend, attending a seminar or hell, watching a tv show you like, advice can come from where you least expect it. The video I watched? Had absolutely nothing to do with processes or writing. It was just a random sentence that popped up and I latched onto it. Always keep your eyes and ears open, for inspiration can come from anywhere! (Including your friendly neighborhood blogger.) 😬

And that is where I will leave you today. I hope you got something out of this post!

Until next time folks…cheers!!!

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To follow me on social, including #booktok and to shop my linktree and Dahsery shops: linktr.ee/promosocially

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Want to start journaling this year? I’ve designed several blank journals that are on Amazon. You can find the graphic link here on the site, or hit up my linktree that houses my shops with thousands of items with my designs on them: linktr.ee/stuffwemade

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If you’ve made it this far, I thank you so much! See you soon. 😊