Gwyn G.B.'s Blog

If you’re looking for some ideas for a fellow book lover, or fancy dropping a few hints to your own family, then here’s a few great places to find some brilliant bookish gifts. You can buy presents for as little as a few pounds, which are great for stocking fillers or Secret Santa presents. There […]

I always need to do a lot of research for the Harrison Lane crime mystery novels. Each book covers a different belief or folklore and for me to be able to put together the murder mystery, I need understand the belief systems that underpin it. For Mermaid Rock, I looked at our fascination with mermaids […]

Who is Harrison Lane? Harrison Lane is the lead character in the Dr Harrison Lane mystery series. He’s a fictional psychologist, who heads up the UK police’s Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit. Harrison also has some other special skills, including he’s an expert tracker. He was trained by his step-father, a Shadow Wolf, one of the […]

For real writers who just have to write ‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ Maya Angelou. Show don’t tell ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.’ Anton Chekhov Just get on with it! ‘Start writing no matter what. The water […]

The author community is very generous with its help and advice and there are some excellent resources for an author beginning their indie publishing journey. The following are some of the top resources I have used and would recommend. I am not earning anything from recommending these, I genuinely have found them useful. There are […]

Tips on finding time for writing

The average income for a writer is something like £12,500, so the chances are if you want to write then you’re juggling a day job and possibly children or at least a partner or a pet. Finding the right work/life balance can be tough for those who just go out to work on a daily basis, let alone need to find the time to write a book. Yet it is possible and there are plenty of writers who are proof of that.

I work full time, have two kids and a husband, plus I also run an educational charity which includes one evening a week overseeing a teenage coding club. I still find time to write though. I can’t give you a magic answer to help you, but I can tell you some things I do to find writing time:

Manage your sleep

There are really only 24 hours in the day and so somehow you have to squeeze as much out of those hours as you can. One thing I do is sleep less.  I used to be an eight hours a night girl, now it’s more like six or seven if I’m lucky. During looming deadlines, it’s five hours or less. At weekends, rather than have a lie-in, I will power nap for  20 minutes and that gives me the mental capacity to keep on going.

Use your Lunch hours and breaks

I rarely go out for my lunch hour at work. Instead I will either try to slip away somewhere quietly and write, or do the various bits I need to do for the marketing if the environment isn’t right for creativity. There are plenty of apps for writing, including the fantastic Scrivener app, or you can just use the good old pen and paper and type it up later.

Find family downtimes

Weekends are precious. I want to spend time with my family, but I also need to write. It’s therefore essential that not only do I get out of bed on time, but I also use those hours when the family are occupied with their own projects.  If you take your kids to clubs then use the time they’re there to write, even if it means sitting in the car and doing it.

Forget the Housework!

Yes I’m afraid to say my house isn’t always the tidiest. There are certain things you can’t avoid, like feeding the kids, but when it comes to tidying and cleaning I’m afraid our house looks very ‘lived in’ during deadline time. I do the basics, or have a manic rush around if someone is due to visit, and I’ll also rope in husband and kids to help. I motivate the children by reminding them that my book writing helps pay for Christmas presents!

Write on the Go

I’m not someone who has thus far been able to write by dictating, I’m far too visual,  but others swear by it once they’ve got used to it. There’s a software called Dragon dictation which some writers use when they’re walking or jogging, or simply at home because in theory it’s much faster than typing. It also helps with RSI. For me, I like to let my characters have conversations and I write lines and scenes in my head when I’m doing something non-taxing like showering, commuting or cooking dinner. Just make sure that once you’ve come up with the great lines and plot, you jot it down. If you’re a train or bus commuter then you’ve no excuse and even if you drive to work, use your phone dictation app.

Don’t make Excuses

There are so many people who have come up to me and said, ‘I wish I could write a book like you, but I don’t have time,’ It’s hard sometimes not to be quite blunt with them. If you look at my schedule, I don’t have time either but the difference is that I love writing, I have to write – always have and always will. Yes it’s damned hard work, but you can set your own schedule. If there’s a day when you can’t write, or even a week, don’t beat yourself up. life will get in the way. The fact is that if you are waiting for that perfect time to write then the chances are it will never come. We can fill our days with ‘things to do’, even if we are retired. The main thing is just get on with it.

Starting off as an author, or indie author?

The author community is very generous with its help and advice and there are some excellent resources for an author beginning their indie publishing journey.

The following are some of the top resources I have used and would recommend. I am not earning anything from recommending these, I genuinely have found them useful. There are others besides the ones I’ve listed, but these suited my fiction work and genre. There are clickable links to the various websites:

Courses

There are lots of courses out there which claim to help writers, but there are a lot of these which only end up helping the person selling them. My principle has been that the best courses are from those who are writers themselves and have used tried and tested techniques to be successful. Some of the following authors sell courses, but they also provide a huge amount of free support:

Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula
Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn
Jane Friedman
The Alliance of Independent Authors
Bryan Cohen
Amazon themselves

Tools

Scrivener for writing your book as it really helps with organisation of a big manuscript
Canva for creating all the visuals you will need
K-lytics for finding the best Amazon categories for your book
Vellum for formatting your books

Podcasts

Podcasts are a brilliant way of keeping up to date with the industry and learning. I listen to them when I’m doing mundane things like driving, cleaning, cooking etc. These are the ones I can wholeheartedly recommend:

Story Grid Podcast
Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula
The Creative Penn Podcast
The Sell More Books show

 

There are tons more resources and specific places to go for help. Do let me know if you have any that you recommend.

Don’t feel guilty having a coffee and sitting down with a good book – you’re looking after your health.

Scientists in both Europe and the US have concluded that drinking coffee helps you live longer. The European study of more than half a million people found that participants who drink three or more cups of coffee a day are 18% less likely to die than non-coffee drinkers.  People who consumed just one cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn’t drink coffee at all. The US study backed up these findings and these aren’t the only research reports to come up with these results. There have been plenty of more specific studies in the past linking coffee drinking to reduced risks of dementia and other diseases.

The scientists think that it’s the antioxidants in coffee which lower the risk of death from heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. Coffee is one of the biggest sources of these valuable antioxidants in our diets. Both the caffeine and caffeine-free varieties have equal effect.

So, drinking coffee gives you more time to read good books – and reading in turn helps your health. Not only does it de-stress and entertain you, but there is evidence which shows it improves memory and concentration, thus helping keep Alzheimer’s and dementia away.

Mental stimulation is one of the best things we can do to prevent dementia and reading also allows us to relate better to other people by increasing our emotional intelligence through a better understanding of other people’s perspectives and motivations.

So, if you’re like me and you enjoy a nice coffee as you curl up on the sofa with a good book – then you’ll be pleased to hear it’s adding years to your life expectancy.

Books are like films and music in that we can often remember where we were when we read a particularly good one. If you, like me, were around in the 1980s, and an avid reader (although I had a bit more time to read in those days!) then you’re probably going to remember a few of these books. Here’s the first half of the decade, 1980-1985.

Let me know which ones you remember and loved.

1980: Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity was itself born in 1980. Matt Damon might have brought Jason Bourne...

I love reading books, but I know people who only ever read Facebook posts or emails and tell me reading is boring – they’re missing out in so many ways.

 

It doesn’t matter how you read – the real thing with a paper book or on a Kindle or e-reader, because reading is not only fun, it’s also good for you. Why? Here’s ten reasons why reading is good for your health.

1. De-stressing

Life can be stressful and research by the University of Sussex showed that even six minutes of reading can lower y...