Author Guest Post: Julie Ryan

Hey! Today I have a Guest Post for you from author Julie Ryan. Today Julie discusses with us 10 things that she wished she had known before she started writing.

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Things I wish I’d known before I started – Julie Ryan

1. If I’d read more about planning and plotting a novel, I might not have had to write my first book twelve times! Even though I can’t change the way I write, I do now spend more time plotting and less on rewriting. I’ll always be a bit of a pantser though as I love the surprises.

2. When the writing process starts, everything else will be put on hold. Don’t expect to have clean clothes, cooked meals or be able to find anything. This is a necessary process to facilitate creativity and will last until approximately two weeks after you finish writing. See point 3 below.

3. You never finish writing! I wish I’d known that when you write ‘The End’ it’s just the beginning and the real work of editing and polishing begins. In my case this can take longer than the actual writing of the book.

4. Writing is addictive. Nobody warned me that once you start you can’t stop. My initial goal was to write a short story. The next goal was to turn it into a novel. After that the goal was to self-publish on Amazon. Then one book became a series. Once you go down that path then I think you are compelled to write even if nobody else ever reads a word of it.

5. You will eat your own bodyweight in chocolate.

6. You will become the Queen of procrastination. Jobs that you used to hate such as filling in the tax return suddenly become quite attractive when faced with a major plot hole or writer’s block.

7. You can receive US royalties from Amazon tax- free if you are UK resident/national but you have to fill in a special form. I discovered this after a year of being self-published.

8. If you are self-pubbed you will need to become a marketing expert as nobody else is going to do it for you unless you can afford a PR assistant. I would never have thought that I would be running several blog sites, be an avid reviewer, network with the mega famous (who I always thought were so out of my league) and have developed a range of skills to be proud of.

9. Prioritise your time. Until I started blogging and building up a network of followers I had no idea how time-consuming it would all be. Admittedly hours on Facebook looking at kittens doesn’t count. Seriously though you need to ‘Work smart, not hard.”

10. I wish I’d known how much I love this passion for writing and wish I’d discovered it years ago. However, I’m enjoying every minute and making up for lost time.

Biography

Julie Ryan’s roots are in a small mining village in South Yorkshire. After a degree in French Language and Literature, wanderlust kicked in and she lived and worked in France, Poland, Thailand and Greece. Her spirit enriched, her imagination fired, Julie started a series of mystery romances, thrillers set in the Greek Isles.

Jenna’s Journey is the first novel in Julie Ryan’s Greek Islands Series, a series she did not set out to create but which took on its own life and grew, rich and fascinating. This is the first of three published so far and promises to delight readers looking for the hidden dark sides of dream vacations in the Greek Isles.

In a new venture, Julie’s latest book is a short rom-com called Callie’s Christmas Countdown.

A prolific and well-known book review blogger, Julie does her writing and reviewing from rural Gloucestershire, where she lives with her husband, son and dippy cat with half a tail.

You can find Julie on her websites:

Website/blog for book reviews

http://www.allthingsbookie.com/

Blog

http://julieryanbooks.blog spot.co.uk

on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/julie.ryan.3114

and on Twitter @julieryan18

Buy links

JENNA’S JOURNEY

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jennas-Journey-Island-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B01GGOCKLK

SOPHIA’S SECRET

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sophias-Secret-Greek-Island-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00LFJGCWA