Do You Need A Writing Career Coach? My Perspective

Use the force, writer.

In my forthcoming book, The Writer’s Workout, the subtitle is:

366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques From Your Writing Career Coach

Which prompted a few people to immediate react with, “A coach? I don’t want a writing career coach.”

And that’s cool. I can totally identify with that response.

But please allow me to clarify…

First of all, I believe that every person has an inner coach within—his or her intuition. I also believe that this inner voice is the ultimate authority for each person. In other words, if it were to come right down to it, and the question was, who should you listen to me or you? As far as I’m concerned, the answer would always be you.

Secondly, I can’t coach everyone at once and do it well. I coach over a dozen writers at a time on an ongoing basis in addition to the writers I’m working with in classes. What makes me successful as a coach is having a personal relationship with each writer I work with. I would not have it any other way.

Finally, I did not set out to become a coach. In fact, for years I was averse to the idea of my name being associated with the word “coach.” I was concerned that I might be perceived as a lifestyle coach and I am definitely not a lifestyle coach. However, at some point in my career, there was simply no denying that coaching best describes what I do.

Coaching is what I do when I’m writing, teaching, speaking, or training. I coach writers to take their writing careers to the next level, to take their careers more seriously without taking themselves too seriously, and to prosper as paid writers.

So, in the end, we put the word “coach” in the book title, since it is full of the kind of advice you’d expect to get from a writing career coach—meaning a person who pays attention to and cares about your writing career.

I even went as far as to get a headshot that makes me look kind of “coachy” — hopefully it’s not too corny. And then I said, “Okay, that’s enough.” I am not going to go overboard with the whole coaching analogy. I am not going to start speaking in “coach speak.” Nor is it my job to twist myself like a pretzel to appear like the ideal “writing coach” every writer in the world has ever imagined.

On a historical note, I played sports when I was in high school and college and I had some totally wonderful coaches I still admire today. I was often in leadership positions on my sports teams and experienced the delicate balance between improving my own game and simultaneously encouraging others to improve theirs, at the same. Let’s just say, it can be tricky. And in case I make it look easy—it isn’t. And yet it is.

Growing and coaching others to grow, too, takes effort and passion. And just like the rest of my work, I am grateful that when one of the two is about to give out, the other is there to catch it. I would be hard-pressed to write a book about learning to coach yourself without experience learning to coach myself.

I think there is something key to the principle of learning to be your own best coach. And that is the grounding principle of The Writer’s Workout.

Not me. You.

Not my career. Your career.

Not me steering your ship. You steering your own ship.

The idea in The Writer’s Workout is that you create your best career. The authority lies in you. Your future success is completely up to you. You pick and choose whatever advice motivates you.

I can’t personally coach thousands of writers at once. However, I am perfectly capable of writing a book that encourages thousands of writers to coach themselves.

And that’s why the book is called 366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques From Your Writing Career Coach.

~ public domain image by william cromar