I’ve been in the trenches, coaching writers, for well over a decade. From long experience, I can tell you that, with writing coaching, the hard stuff is the stuff that can make or break a career. And by “hard stuff,” I mean whatever you currently don’t have in your writer’s toolkit.
Most writers have mad skills in some areas, but struggle in others. For instance, you may be a crazy plotting genius, but create flat-as-a-pancake characters. Or, you’re an amazing researcher, but stumble when trying to organize your ideas on the page.
As writers, we all have strengths and weaknesses. But, weirdly, it’s looking our weaknesses straight in the eye that separates successful writers from those who never reach their full potential. It’s natural to want to work around our literary deficiencies. But if we’re willing to really dig in to the less-developed aspects of our writing, we will—eventually—strike gold.
Writing coaching: the hard stuff
Tackling those underdeveloped skills head-on isn’t easy. As a professional writing coach, I often see writers struggle with aspects of writing that feel completely out of their current reach—creating a dynamic plot, for some; finding a convincing voice for others. However, I know that if they keep at it—putting in what may seem an unreasonable amount of time and effort—there will be a pay off.
On the other hand, some writers can’t—or won’t—harness their energies to make the admittedly uphill climb to mastering a tough skill. They truly believe their current (easier, go-to) strengths will carry them to where they want to be in their writing life.
I understand! But that’s not how it works—at least not in my experience.
Hiring a writing coach
So … you know something in your writer’s arsenal needs to be powered up. You hire a writing coach. And it’s going wonderfully! Your coach is an angel on your shoulder. She encourages you, provides accountability, reads your work with enthusiasm and insight. Fantastic!
Of course, she also points out areas of your work that could use some improvement. Many of these aspects are easy-peasy to address. Yes, I can easily be more precise with my verbs, you say. Also, Giving more visual cues to my readers? No problem.
But the hard thing? 
That “weakness” which is native to you as a writer, your literary blind spot? As you work with your coach, that will become more and more evident. Worse, no matter how hard you try to address this most difficult of skills, you may feel you aren’t making significant progress. And your darned coach won’t let it go!
Fortunately, she will bring myriad ways to help you on-board the skill you most need to master. That’s because she knows how important it is to your career. You can’t maneuver around a deficit without compromising your work as a whole.
Yet, despite your—and your coach’s—best intentions, you may get to a point of frustration. You might want to toss up the whole enterprise and walk away. But—and I am telling you this with the deepest compassion I can bring here—if you keep moving in the direction of excellence, especially when the going gets tough, you will make it through. Then, you will reap rewards you can’t even imagine when you’re humping that huge load of sticks uphill toward your beautiful writing dream.
I believe in you! If you’re ready to dig and find out what you’re made of, a chat with a top writing coach might be your next step on the road to literary success.
As a professional writing coach, I support fiction and nonfiction writers working in a number of genres. Wherever you are on your writing journey, I would love to see how I can help you achieve your literary goals. Schedule your free writing consultation with me. And take a look at THE WRITER mag article “Should I Hire a Writing Coach.”
The image of tarot’s Ten of Wands comes from the ASTROMATRIX TAROT, available on Amazon.