Katie Forrest’s Time Management for Writers – An Interview

Katie Forrest is a time management geek, lawyer, solo traveller, and lover of caffeine. She writes fiction under two pen names and lives near Sherwood Forest with her husband and daughter. She blogs on all things linked to time management and productivity at her website, and is the host of the Facebook group Time Management for Writers. Her latest book, Time Management for Writers, launches today.

Time Management for Writers

Hi, Katie! Thanks for taking the time to do this with me and congrats on the launch. Tell us about your new book!

My book is called Time Management for Writers and it’s a handbook for creatives who aren’t being as productive as they want to be.

Unproductive creatives? Is that a thing? I thought remaining organised and focused came natural to use! Just kidding, obviously 😉 It sounds like a book many, many of us should have on their nightstand. So, how’s Time Management for Writers different from other books on the same topic? What does it add?

It takes the idea of time management and applies it to creatives. A lot of time management books are incredibly helpful, but they can be skewed towards corporate life and executives. A creative business has different requirements, and a creative person faces challenges that I haven’t seen covered in regular time management resources.

I’m guessing that’s part of why you wrote Time Management for Writers?

Partly, yes. In 2018, I wrote and published eleven books while working in a demanding day job (I co-own a boutique law firm) and raising a child with special needs. People asked how I had achieved it, and my answer was always that there was no magic bullet, just a firm time management framework. This book is me sharing that framework with people, not so that they can write eleven books in a year, but so they can move closer to achieving their goals—whatever they may be.

I love that, that it’s not about people being able to do the same you did as long as they read your book. It’s about them learning how to stick to their own goals, and those might be wildly different from yours. So, who will benefit from Time Management for Writers?

Any writer or aspiring writer who wants to achieve more.

Ironically, the people who are drawn to a book like this tend to already be productive, and they’re looking for extra tweaks and changes to help them improve further.

The book is accessible for a beginner as well as people who may have heard of time management, perhaps from their corporate life. Everything is broken down and a lot of the advice is based around my own framework, so it will be helpful for writers at all stages of their creative career.

What is the best writing advice you were ever given?

Just finish.

I was a serial starter, and it took me years to make myself complete a project. Everything changed once I finished that first project.