Tag: cold snap

Happy New Year!

2024 is off like a rocket. I finished the first draft of my 8th book last week and had a VERY exciting phone call about my 7th book that I’ll divulge more details about later. But back to finishing the book!

My YA thriller ended up being 77,264 words long, which was close to my target word count. The working title is GYBE. For a book that was just ‘vibes’ in October, it only took ten weeks to become a fully-fledged novel by January. Ha, Gybe-vibes. I think my average pace of six months per book is realistic long-term, although I would love to reach the point where I complete a project every four months and do three per year. However, I don’t know if that will be possible until fall of 2025, when my youngest will start kindergarten. So, for now, I’m just enjoying the brain dump that happens once I’m done with a draft and letting the plot threads leak out of my ears.

I’m putting the draft aside for a couple weeks so it will be fresh when I start to revise. I’ve been focusing on some of my New Year’s goals instead. I like the word ‘goals’ instead of ‘resolutions’. ‘Resolution’ seems very constrictive and almost punitive, like one misstep and you’ve failed your resolution. Might as well throw in the towel for 2024! My goal for this year is to meditate more. My hope is that meditation will lead to improvements in other areas of my life—patience, creativity, and lessening anxiety. Instead of a bunch of small, individual goals, I’ve gathered them all up into one action: meditate! Efficient, no? I think it’s working so far (thanks, HeadSpace app!). I manifested the crap out of the first 2 weeks this year 😉

People ask how I celebrate being done with a draft. It is very nerdy and not at all exciting for anyone who isn’t me. Usually, I say, “Woohoo!” then I double-space the whole manuscript. I draft in single-space format, so after I type ‘The End’, I get to watch the manuscript page number multiply. I look forward to this moment for months (don’t judge me). Then celebrations might involve a cocktail at the end of the day while Conor cooks a nice dinner. Then it’s back to life as usual. Here I am, doing laundry and watching my kids bounce off the walls post-draft. The reality of being a parent writer!

Who else is ready for warmer weather??

Love,

Taylor

The Big Chill

How are all my east coast liveaboards out there faring during this crazy cold weather? The summer humidity seems like a lifetime ago. We were not expecting it to ever get this cold in coastal North Carolina, and the past few days have been quite the experience as we scrambled to figure out how to balance heat and available power on the boat.

frozen
Anyone for a swim?

Our central air was working wonderfully until two days ago, when the river got too cold. Because our Marine Mermaid AC/heat relies on water intake, the system couldn’t extract enough heat to warm the boat above the low 60s. So, we turned that off (takes up too much power) and bought two space heaters. Thankfully our space is small! They are a big energy suck and we tripped the breakers more than once figuring out what appliances we could have running simultaneously. The balancing act includes unplugging the smaller heater in order to run the microwave, and god forbid we turn on the hot water at all!

For the past two days, we’ve just moved the heaters into whatever space we are occupying and shut off the rest of the boat. The v-berth has the worst insulation in the boat, so that door has been shut for a few days. We keep our bedroom door shut as well during the day and move everything for Baby W out into the main area. At night, the whole family goes into the aft cabin for a snuggly night’s sleep (or as much sleep as you can get with a newborn)!

I know that boaters up north have it wayyyy tougher than we do, and one frozen week out of the year isn’t too bad. Still, I’m really looking forward to Monday, when it is supposed to heat back up into the 60s and we can get back into our routine. The good news is that day-to-day challenges on the boat won’t seem nearly as tough after getting through this weather!

Hope you all are staying warm and dry.

Love,

Taylor, Conor, and W