Welcome to Guy who writes

2026 January 12th

Welcome to my writing blog and newsletter. It’s not my only or my first blog, but here I’ve things I’d like to say that are different to what I talk about elsewhere. In particular I want to talk about writing, my own writing especially, as I continue through a lifelong journey as a writer.

Writing isn’t the only thing I do - I’m an aeronautical engineer, a university professor, a pilot, a cancer survivor (at-least, so-far so-good), and I’ve a lifelong exercise habit - currently mostly served by cross country running and a rowing machine. However alongside all of that, the written word has always been a companion to me.

I’ve no idea how many books, magazines, eBooks, research papers and the like I’m consumed - many thousands certainly. I learned to read before starting school (thanks to a wonderful Mum, a natural curiosity, and a born learning envy), and from Janet and John children’s books to the handful of fiction and professional books I’m in the middle of fifty years later, I’m an insatiable reader. But I’ve also been writing, usually for money, for thirty-seven years and that I can track. So, roughly speaking, I’ve written:-

- Four books, one of them jointly with the wonderful Mrs.G, another in two editions;

- Eleven articles in The Conversation, which have variously been read, on average, over 70,000 times each.

- At-least two hundred magazine articles;

- Thirty three papers in research journals (winning four awards for a few of them);

- Two unpublished novels;

- The script for one graphic novel (still in progress);

- One PhD thesis;

- A handful of research grant applications;

- And more technical reports than I’d care to remember any more.

It’s never been my main income, but it’s certainly been a useful part of it: writing for magazines helped fund my way through my first degree, writing technical stuff has been an essential part of my career bouncing around aerospace engineering, and it’s always been deeply satisfying.

I also write to learn. That might sound odd, but time after time I’ve found that writing about something has helped me to massively improve my understanding of whatever I was writing about. That’s been true whether I’m writing a flight test article in a flying magazine, an engineering textbook, or even my recent forays into fiction. Putting your ideas on paper, making sure that everything you say is defensible, and ensuring a clear narrative flow from start to end, is incredibly effective in improving your own understanding of something. I definitely learn more from writing a book on something, than I do from reading somebody else’s book on the same topic (that said, for every book I’ve written, I’ve read at-least twenty other books, purely in support of that effort.)

So I won’t be bombarding your inbox with this - I just haven’t the time to. But, I do plan to write every month or so about something related to writing. A lot of that is going to be about my own writing and I’m sure my reasons for that are obvious: I’m hoping that you’ll get hold of and read some of it.

There will be a choice of stuff by me to get hold of as well I hope. I’m not so much prolific, as rubbish at concentrating upon one thing at a time. But I hope this coming year there’ll be my first novel (in a planned series), a third edition of my magnum opus, Initial Airworthiness coming out, and at-least one research paper which is now six months into refereeing, so I hope I’ll hear back about that sometime soon (at some point, I’m sure I’ll talk, possibly rant, about the academic journal process and my relationship with it.)

So, if you’re interested, please subscribe, and please talk your friends and colleagues into subscribing as well. It’ll stay free of charge, and like most writers - I write to be read.

If you’d like to read some of my writing, here are a few links:-

My author’s page on The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/uk/search?q=Guy+Gratton

My author’s page on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B006TZ8Q5G

My substack blog, Guy with Cancer: https://guywithcancer.substack.com/