Writing coaching is…
Support
Having someone out there who knows you’re writing, who can follow your daily progress and talk with you about what’s working and what isn’t. A writing coach can help you develop the a daily practice to make you successful. A great coach helps you avoid problems while challenging yourself without overworking.
Accountability
Being in relationship with someone who tracks your work can do more than let you know when you aren’t showing up. A good writing coach will help you recognize your successes, value your hard work, and give yourself the credit you deserve. Too often writers overwork themselves, feel inadequate, and see more negatives than positives. Working harder is NOT always the answer. A good coach knows this.
Mentoring
Inevitably questions will arise: decisions about paths to take, strategies, an outside view on what’s working. A good coach has been there with his or her own drafts and knows when to offer advice and when to offer support. A good coach has both the training in having learned from the greats and the experience in having written through the issues you’ll confront.
Teaching
A good coach knows how to help you focus on your craft and keep improving your writing over time. Within a couple of months of working with a coach, you should see dramatic improvements in the quality of your pages; you should see big differences if you go back and look at work before you started coaching.
Clarity / Lightness
Too often writers write in a vacuum, separated from readers, and voices that can really help. Yes, writing is solitary, but you don’t have to walk the road alone. To put it in terms of athletics, it’s really hard to be both the player and the coach. All the great pros have a coach or coaches. Why should you be any different? Are you trying to be a professional writer? Want to publish books? It may be time to have help from someone who can see what you’re doing, evaluate your writing, and know the terrain.
Objectivity
If your friends or loved ones are your best readers, it can really help to scale up and get a more objective view from someone who knows what they’re saying. Would you expect the best therapy from your friends and family? Have you ever hired a professional in that field? Maybe it’s time to do the same for your most important endeavor: your writing.
Working with a writing coach means…
Freedom to recognize and delight in the triumphs you’re creating–ones you might not even be seeing yet. Many writers approach the page with something to prove – not in the sense that they want to show themselves to the world, but that they deserve a seat at the table.
Let me take that concern out of your mind. Sit down at my writers’ table. I have a seat for you.
