I have always wanted to be a writer, but my career path took me in a completely different direction. As my career began to wind down, I decided to get serious about writing so I enrolled in a two year online certificate program.
Unfortunately, I had so little writing experience that even the two-year program was not enough to get me writing consistently and effectively.
Being overly perfectionistic, I lacked reasonable goals and forward momentum, opting instead to polish and re-polish my first chapter or two.
I enrolled in Seth’s course as part of my certificate program, loved it, and when Seth announced that he was going into the coaching business, I leapt at the opportunity to learn from him one-0n-one.
Part of me worried that a coach would either tell me what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear, or would scoff at my lousy writing. I had investigated working with a coach previously, and felt discouraged by the response that I received.
The more I worked with Seth, the more I found that I could trust him. His advice got my writing “in shape” in the way I had hoped.
I broke the continuous self-editing habit that was keeping me from building up any forward momentum. Coaching helped a great deal with this: I could say, “Well, I’ll keep going and if I’m way out in left field, Seth will let me know”…and most of the time Seth said, “Just keep going.”
After writing four days a week, thousands of words over the past few months, I feel much more comfortable with the process as it happens, and with the “stuff” that I have created.
Now, I’m more confident in my ability to get what I see in my mind onto the paper, I’m consistent with my writing practice, and I have an emerging ability to edit my own work.
Seth has mastered the balance between being fair-minded and analytical, and being positive and supportive. He kept me on-task, and at the same time taught me how to keep myself on task.
Lynn B.
