Why hire a writing coach? Because you deserve to have someone on your side. Someone who listens to both your hopes and your goals for your writing life. Someone who can also help you do the work that will get you there.
Hiring a Coach
If you’re considering hiring a writing coach, great! Even if you’re fairly new to writing, it means you’re serious about moving forward toward your writing dreams. You’re ready to dedicate time to your craft and to bringing your project to completion.
Still, it can be hard to find folks who are knowledgeable about writing and interested in talking about our writing with us. Your writing coach ticks both boxes. At each meeting, she’s excited to see what you’ve written and to discuss ways to make your work sing.
Why hire a writing coach? Your coach is like a guide, a Sherpa. She knows the terrain you want to travel. She knows how long the road is, how steep the climb, and where the obstacles are likely to lie.
What Makes Coaching Different
Writers have more resources than ever before. Classes can teach craft. Critique groups can provide community and a range of perspectives. Developmental editors can offer in-depth feedback on a manuscript.
But writing coaching is different. No matter how wonderful a teacher, workshop leader, or critique partner, none of them can give you the individual, expert attention your writing coach will deliver. Your coach focuses only on you—your writing and the process you go through to create that writing.
A coaching relationship is an ongoing conversation about your work: about structure, character, pacing, organization, theme, focus, motivation, and the hundred other choices that will shape your book over time.
You Don’t Need to Have Everything Figured Out
Some writers come to coaching with a complete draft. Others come with a notebook full of ideas to explore. Together, you and your coach will determine where you are—and where you want to go. Then she’ll sketch a map that will get you there.
Getting Going
Wherever we start, our work together will be unique—because you’re unique! However, it will generally look something like this:
- Every week or two, you’ll send me pages from your work in progress—a chapter or scene, perhaps.
- We’ll meet on Zoom to talk about the work you’ve sent and whatever other points arise in our conversation. For instance, we might consider issues of plot, pacing, or voice.
- Finally, we’ll make a plan—with homework!—to carry your project forward to the next step.
Each meeting will help you make changes that will take your work to the next level.
A Coach Who Uses a Coach
I helped Ryan G. Van Cleave—a writing coach himself and Head of Creative Writing at Ringling College of Art and Design—with a couple of writing projects he’d been stuck on. After we’d worked together, he wrote an article for The Writer magazine about coaching. Here’s what he had to say:
If you’re interested in breaking through, moving past baggage that’s getting in the way of your success, or transforming the entire process into something more enjoyable and effective, then bringing in a writing coach can be a great choice.
And if [that coach is] talented, like Jamie Morris is, she’ll shorten the learning curve on your writing career.—Ryan G. Van Cleave, “Should I Hire a Writing Coach?” The Writer
The Goal of Hiring a Writing Coach
Basically, a writing coach is your smart, capable writing friend. She’s traveled this road before and knows how to help you get to where you want to be. Your coach is interested in you as a writer.
Whether she forwards an article or makes time for a quick consultation between sessions, your coach is there to support and encourage you, to sympathize and celebrate with you—and most of all to help you write a book you’re proud to put into the world.
If that sounds like the kind of support you’re looking for, let’s talk.
One Writer’s Story About Hiring a Writing Coach
Dr. Elizabeth (Lisa) Sanders had a drawer full of well-started, but never-finished novels—good ones! Lisa could plot up a storm and create compelling characters to carry those plots, so the quality of her writing wasn’t the problem.
What was the problem? Life! Busy both with her practice and her own family, she just never managed to get any of her excellent stories all the way to the finish line.
Lisa
is very smart, very independent. She figured if she really wanted to launch a career as a novelist, she would make it happen, busy life or no. But she didn’t. Until she decided to get some support—in the form of hiring a writing coach—and, yes, completed a strong draft of a contemporary thriller she’s currently preparing for editorial review.
Lisa graciously allowed me to share her story, just in case you—smart, independent, with a big writing project waiting in the wings of your life—are asking, “Why hire a writing coach?”
Lisa’s Novel-Writing Journey
In June 2020, a few months into the pandemic, my private medical practice was struggling, and I, personally, was weighed down by the new reality. I was searching for something life-affirming to do—beyond creating a sourdough starter or fermenting my own vinegar. (I had already canned jam and sewn a quilt. Anything to distract myself from the harrowing truth of COVID.)
At that time, I was finding it hard to read—or even to listen to audio books. I couldn’t go to the gym because of COVID. And it was the dead heat of our Florida summer, only to get hotter, so hiking and biking were both out.
FinaIly, I decided I would invest in myself creatively in a different way, a way that initially felt extravagant and extraordinary. I decided to hire Jamie Morris to coach me as I tried to write a novel.
I made peace with the idea by thinking of it as hiring a personal trainer for my writing life. So, I asked Jamie if she could help me create a habit for writing that would get me all the way through a sturdy first draft—finally.
Why Hire a Writing Coach? As a Literary Personal Trainer!
Writing was not new to me. I’d written most of a novel eight years before, but it was now sitting in a box. When I contacted Jamie, I was holding several other filaments of novels in my head. To get us started, Jamie asked me to send her slivers of each story so she could see which sounded the strongest.
I did, and she suggested that we work on a thriller. It had a strong voice, she said, and felt like it had “legs.” And with that, we were off!
No longer was writing just a hobby. Having Jamie as a coach meant I had a benchmark, a deadline, and a reader that would assess my work, give me feedback, and teach me better techniques. She helped me access my confidence. She helped me see I had a story to tell and the ability to tell it well.
Six months later, with two-thirds of a solid draft in hand, I re-upped with Jamie for a second round. During our second set of sessions, I fleshed out the full arc of my character and her narrative and fine-tuned her voice.
Across the Finish Line
Another few months elapsed, and I had a finished draft of a full novel. Sure, I needed to edit it further. It needed to be tighter. But, with Jamie’s strong guidance, I had the next steps on my path mapped out. Suggesting I get fresh eyes on the manuscript before embarking on another round of edits, she recommended a few developmental editors for me to contact.
I think writing a novel is like training for a marathon. I couldn’t just sit down and pour the novel out of my head any easier than I could run 50 kilometers without a plan. Novel writing takes training, endurance, and perseverance. Jamie helped me create the plan and fulfill it. And she made every moment I spent with her count.