A thoughtful, well-researched guide to creating good writing habits.
A debut manual lays out practical steps to making writing part of one’s daily life.
As a former computer scientist–turned–writing coach, Britton’s path to writing wasn’t always clear; she quips that in graduate school, she “preferred cleaning toilets to writing papers.” But the writing she did as part of her job and her work toward a master’s degree in positive psychology made her realize that putting words on paper didn’t have to be a chore, and in this book, she encourages readers to similarly “enter the space of deliberate writing practice with an experimental mindset.” The book focuses on ways to encourage writing as a habit through three eponymous actions: “Sit” (quieting the mind to prepare for writing), “Write” (getting material on paper), and “Share” (involving an audience in the work). Britton breaks these into subcategories of “experiments,” such as setting one’s specific intentions for a writing project, using dictation as a creative jump-start, or examining one’s writing for cultural sensitivity. Most experiments include a “Story,” or fictionalized anecdote, to help readers visualize an exercise, and sections end with a “Moral,” or takeaway, such as “It is easier to be accountable to someone else than to yourself.” The author presents an accessible structure that readers can adapt to their lives as needed. The book reads like a scientific sibling to Julia Cameron’s more spiritual The Artist’s Way (1992), as Britton’s advice is well grounded in research on habit creation, backed by an ample resource list. Although some experiments may seem overly familiar (reading more books to inspire one’s writing; silencing the inner critic), others are refreshingly intriguing (using a “procrastination hierarchy” to get writing done). The use of subcategories and granular steps may overwhelm some readers, but Britton’s conversational tone is a strength, and when discussing the fear people often face in starting to write, she’s reassuring: “Let me invite you to write without worrying about whether you are a writer. You are a writer already. You make up new sentences out loud all day long without worrying about whether you are a speaker.”
A thoughtful, well-researched guide to creating good writing habits.Pub Date: April 29, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-98582-460-5
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Theano Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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