Goodbye everyone

It is a fact that nowadays I put in much fewer hours than I used to. It's possibly because I write more quickly than I once did. Also, my husband has retired and I don't want to shut myself away in an office all day. Mind you, I have generally found four hours a day enough. The trick is not to move away from your typewriter or computer during that time. Don't ever leave to do a bit of gardening or vacuum the house if you're stuck for ideas. Stay where you are until the ideas come. For during those hours, you are a writer, not a gardener or a cleaner. Leave your phone behind if you can. You can visit the kitchen to make yourself endless drinks of tea or coffee, answer calls of nature, but otherwise stay glued to your seat and stare at the screen or the keyboard or the empty page of your notebook until you think of what to put next. Sometimes this is difficult if you have worries that take over, but if the worries aren't TOO serious than writing is a great escape from every day life. You are living another life that becomes very real to you, so much so you emerge from your writing period to discover it isn't Christmas, but a lovely sunny June.
 
This is my final blog on BookBite. I really have enjoyed my time as your Writer in Residence. I had never written blogs before and am amazed I was able to write so many. I wish you all the luck in the world with your writing because it is a truly wonderful occupation. I was at a Romantic Novelists' Association party last week and someone asked me if I was perhaps just slightly bored with writing after all this time and I answered honestly that I wasn't, not a bit. I recently started to write my twenty-first saga, but was interrupted and asked if I would write another Quick Reads book. These are novels of about 20,000 words for people who have never read before and would like to start. The stories aren't complicated and are written in a simple manner. I am now halfway through Amy's Diary. Then I published on Kindle an old novel, a thriller called Dusk, that my agent had been unable to sell, yet I considered very good. I find myself visiting the Kindle site several times a day to see where it is in the charts. I am finding it very exciting - or dead exciting as we say in Liverpool. So farewell and keep writing. Maureen Lee.