There is a reason I haven’t been churning out any posts recently, and it’s because I’ve been focussed on finishing my novel. It’s been a long road, sometimes smooth, often bumpy, as I squinted at my computer screen and squeezed out the words. How lovely it must be to write some people have said to me, and it is, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great creative thing to be making up a long piece of fiction. But it is hard work. I think I summed it up when my granddaughter gasped when I told her how long it had taken. I said, “I guess it’s a little like homework, it needs plotting, planning, and a lot of patience to work it all out.” My manuscript is not huge at 74,000, though enough I think, since it’s taken me two and a half years of my life to produce it.

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