Tag: Book

I interviewed author Kathleen McGurl on my website last year. She has written hundreds of short stories and moved into writing full novels in the past few years. Her website is interesting and talks about her writing life, and among the books she has written, there is a time management book called, Give up Ironing – a Writer’s Guide to Time Management.

The number 1 reason people give for not writing is that they don’t have time. Kathleen has taken note of this and written a short time management book, so that excuse does not get in the way of reading this book. Her aim is to show would-be writers that if writing is important enough to them then it is possible to find time to write. Her first section talks about freeing up time to write and encourages the reader to look at what they do with their time and decide their priorities.

The second section deals with making the most of your writing time, encouraging good preparation and ensuring that when you find time to write, you are able to do so. There is nothing worse than finding that you have half an hour to write, then finding that you are unable to decide what you want to write. These days, you can find yourself turning to social media or constantly checking emails rather than settling down to write. Personally, if I’m trying to get things done, then I find it best to turn off the notifications. Kathleen suggests ways to maintain your discipline to ensure that your writing time is used just for writing rather than other things.

Her final section talks about motivating yourself to write. She suggests ways to help yourself make the most of each writing session and ways to treat yourself when you have achieved what you have set out to achieve. She covers finding time to exercise which is essential as writing is such a sedentary activity and the importance of finding time for your family as well as reading which is so important for a writer. As you may be able to gather from the title of the book, however, Kathleen does not consider ironing as a vital activity that she should be doing instead of writing, in fact she is quite happy to give it up and makes here opinions quite clear. Finally she does emphasise that not all her tips will work for everybody.

Give up Ironing is a very readable self-help book for writers. It is full of good advice, short and to the point and written by someone who has a full-time job and a family but who is managing to write as a career. I would recommend it for people who want to find more time to write and who may feel that they need a push to get their fledgling author career off the ground. Kathleen herself is very approachable and down-to-earth and her website is well worth checking out too.

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