Building a Writing Toolkit Part II: Put Me In, Coach!
Plus: last week for discounted enrollment in the fall writers' circles and FREE summer planning sessions
Hi darlings,
This week we had dinner with friends, and all of our kids were playing while we had a little wine. My friend Lisa said something about Kamala Harris being our first woman president, and my six-year-old daughter looked over at us and said “ooh there could be a girl president? Maybe that means I could be a girl president too!” and then went back to coloring. What a difference a week makes, eh?
As I’m navigating this unfamiliar feeling of…optimism? elation? hope? there’s still work to be done! So, I wanted add to your writing support toolkit.
Last week, we talked about how to make sure you build and maintain a solid community. You need one of those all of the time, even when things are good. AND being a good community member is service to the profession so you can feel good doing it.
This week, I want to talk about narrowing the pyramid of support: when to seek out coaching/consulting, and why.
So if we have a writing pyramid, the bottom is a community that makes you feel smart and loved and supported and like you can do anything (even be a girl president one day!) And the tippy top is the technical interventions you need to make your writing the best it can be (that’s next week’s post!)
That layer in the middle is all of the other… “stuff,” the knowledge, content, skills, you need to actually produce the writing. And that’s where coaches come in!
Whats and whys of writing coaches
I started coaching when people kept asking me to edit stuff that wasn’t quite ready (or didn’t exist on paper!) And I realized that a lot of people didn’t actually want an editor. They wanted a coach, so I needed a business model that could give them the support they needed.
What does it look like? Coaching can look a lot of different ways (like teaching or therapy!).
Some coaches have a model or blueprint, and working with them is a very prescriptive process: “In 12 weeks, you’ll write a journal article.” Or, “each week, we’ll work through pages of a workbook as we convert your dissertation into a book.” And this is super helpful for some folks!
Other coaches have an approach very akin to therapy, focused on psychological or social barriers keeping you from writing. Again, for some folks, really helpful!
Neither of those models really match what I do, although of course there are always components of both. My approach is to work with each client to create an individualized plan that will help them achieve their writing goals—realizing that we’re all humans who write.
Who doesn’t need a coach? If you have a solid plan for what you’re doing, are waking up and writing on the days you say you’re going to write, and mostly hitting your goals—and somewhat enjoying the process—you probably don’t need a coach!
I’m always weary of trying to fix things that aren’t broken, and sometimes people just need reassurance that they’re doing great, a support system exists if things get hard, but they should just keep doing what they’re doing.
Who does need a coach, and when? I think there are at least two categories of people who need coaches: external processors, and people who could use someone to help with the skills or content needed to get their work into the world.
Importantly, I think some people decide to seek out coaching too late, assuming that “real” academics “go it alone.” I’ve seen smart, talented scholars get so stuck in their heads that what could have been two or three tactical “conversation ones” (see below) becomes months of “conversation threes” (see below) because of lost confidence.
A tale of three conversations
To give you a flavor of what coaching can look like, here are three conversations I’ve had with clients the past few months.
Conversation one: does this even make sense? One of the reasons it can be nice to have a co-author is that you have someone to bounce ideas off of in the formative stages of the writing process. When it’s just you, your computer, and your thoughts, it can feel like you’re making a thousand little decisions and have no idea if they all fit together or what things will look like at the end. That’s where I come in! People send me early-stage documents with notes in the margins like “does this even make sense?” and we chat our way through it. My goal is to know the project almost as well as my clients do, so I have a good sense of how things fit together.
Conversation two: how do I make it all fit? We all live complicated lives…we all have competing demands from caretaking, teaching, service, playing competitive Scrabble, being childless cat ladies taking over the world, etc.
Oftentimes, as a prerequisite to conversation one, folks need conversation two: how do I make writing fit? And this is the most important question, I think. How can you be selfish on behalf of your work? What can you say “no” to, what can you say “not now” to, what can you say “I can do less” to? What can you outsource? This is a little bit like having a life coach, but one who helps you create a permission structure around writing.
Conversation three: how do I get out of my own head? As a prerequisite to points 1 and 2, sometimes writers need help figuring out what’s keeping them from writing at all. Sometimes people are using stuff from number 2 as an excuse for not getting things done (one of the first things we tell people at writing retreats is to give yourself the gift/challenge of not sending emails or grading while you’re there). What are you telling yourself, or what messages have you internalized from other people, that have kept you from writing your best stuff? My advice here is often to just not to write for a little while. Step away from the project, reset your brain, and come back to it in a prescribed amount of time.
These conversations are also helpful when you’re trying something new. I’ve worked with a writing coach off and on for years, and in our last few conversations the advice she’s given me is to fuck around more with my writing. This is great advice for me, and also really hard!
What do these conversations have in common? a) they’re all just-in-time, synchronous interventions; b) there’s an element of strategy and skill-building c) they focus on writers as people first; d) they aren’t therapy.
Your homework:
Your homework this week is just to pay attention to your writing as things ramp up for the semester. If things are going great, trust yourself! If you’re starting to struggle, think about whether coaching would help—and reach out to a coach before things feel hard.
Take care,
Kelly
Keeping of the House
Writing support all semester long:
This is the last week to sign up for our weekly writers’ circles at a discount. These are a fantastic way to build community, support, and accountability around your writing practices all semester long. Join us! Everyone who signs up by August 1 gets the pre-semester price!
If you’re writing a book, the next quarter of my book writing workshop kicks off August 6-8, and I promise there’s no better group of people to be writing alongside. The focus for August’s quarter is all about telling a story and how to focus on the mezzo level of the writing process. Join us!
For either of these you can add one-on-one coaching (!) and editing (next week’s topic!) to help you build out your whole toolkit of writing support so you can focus on just producing the research that will change the world (you know, no pressure).
Free end-of-summer pop-ups:
August 20: 2-3 eastern: Spring 2024: Let’s talk. A combo ask-me-anything and strategy session. We’ll chat about planning for the fall semester, setting intentions, and kicking ass.
August 21: 12-1 eastern: Let’s read. A writing room, but for reading. Pour yourself some tea, close your laptop, and spend an hour reading that book that’s been in your bag all summer but you’ve never managed to open.
August 22: 2-3 eastern: Let’s write. An hour-long goal-setting and writing session to get you ready for the fall.
Sign up here, and I’ll send you a link for the sessions—join for one, two, or all three!