Writing Coaching
Why is coaching important?
Consider me your writing personal trainer. Writing is not just a skill, it’s like a muscle. Use it or lose it. The more you write, the better and stronger your writing will be.
Consistent writing also helps you uncover your own unique voice as a business owner that will make your writing stand out with your clients, community, and audience. One of the misconceptions about writing is that there is only one way of writing.
This is categorically untrue.
Writing is not—and should not be—rigid or restrictive. Writing is a unique and individualized process that every writer will approach differently based on their writing background, language abilities, and past experiences.
My aim is to help you overcome insecurities that were created in the past and impact your writing confidence now.
My coaching ethos
My goal is to coach you to help bring out your existing writing ability and teach you the skills you need to be a better writer.
I believe that everyone is a writer. Writing is a form of communication and humans are naturally communicative beings. So you already are a writer. But we can work together to help you maximize your writing ability.
I’m not here to keep moving the goalpost and keep you stuck paying for endless sessions to feel like you’re making progress. We’ll set your goals and make a plan and by the end of our time together you’ll have the skills you need to continue the work on your own. Depending on the project that we’re working on, deliverables could include:
Templates
A refined writing process built around your unique needs
A writing routine to make your writing sessions more efficient
An outline for your book, a detailed evaluation of your manuscript or a finished first draft of your book.
In my 10+ years experience of teaching writing focused classes at the college/university level I’ve worked with non-native English writers with varying proficiencies in writing in English, writers with dyslexia, and writers with severe insecurities based on harsh criticism from previous writing/English teachers. I pride myself in working with my students' existing abilities and helping them grow stronger and more confident in their writing.
A note about grammar:
As a writer and writing coach from a rhetoric background, I don’t subscribe to privileging a “standardized” concept of grammar. I’m a rhetorician who’s also a bit of a linguistic nerd. There’s a difference between “grammar” of language and usage/mechanics of language. I will help you improve your overall usage and mechanics when writing and point you towards digital tools that will help you check your mechanics before sending something off to a client or posting it online. But more importantly, I hope to work with you to break down insecurities you may have about your grammar knowledge and to help you work out when it is—and isn’t—the main thing you should focus on. Having clean writing, free of typos and errors, matters. But it’s far from the most important aspect of writing.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for someone to be your grammar teacher or the “grammar police” for your writing, I am not the coach for you. Anyone can teach you grammar, and a good copy editor is always going to be a solid investment for critical documents. I help you to focus on ideas, processes, and structure and get your project done.