I was fired by my first writing coach.
Yes, you read that right, she fired me. Her words, “There’s a window of opportunity that you’ve missed, you’re not ready. You don’t have the right mindset.”
Working with her was the first time I’d ever worked with a “coach.” At that point, I already had a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Writing and Poetics. It was not my first time at the writing rodeo, but it was my first time venturing down the road of writing something bigger, more personally meaningful, and more unruly than I had before, and I wanted support. I had doubts. And I had tendencies toward profound procrastination.
I was looking for someone who could help guide the way, someone who had traveled similar territory, could point me in the right direction, hold my hand through rocky and dangerous terrain, and more importantly, someone who understood what it meant for me on a level that went beyond the words on the page and the “project” itself. I wanted someone who understood this was a journey, not just a destination.
I also wanted a witness who could reflect back what they saw and felt in my writing so I could know if it was meaningful to anyone else besides me. And while I couldn’t articulate it at the time, I was looking for someone who could help me navigate the psychological, emotional, and spiritual territory that writers traverse when writing something that comes from the soul.
I got none of this from her.
The few sessions we had before she fired me consisted of me talking about my vision while repeatedly glancing at my watch to be sure I wasn’t going over time (so I wouldn’t be charged more for the session) and waiting for her to give me direction, any direction.
Since I’d never worked with a writing coach before, I didn’t know if I was supposed to give her my writing to read or just talk about it. She never asked to see my writing and she gave me no clear guidance. She simply sat across the table from me at Barnes and Noble sipping her coffee and waited for me to know what to do. Apparently she was waiting for me to step through a “window of opportunity” I didn’t realize was there. There were rules to the coaching game, a game I didn’t know I was playing.
After years of writing (and not writing) on my own, coupled with leading small writing groups and circles that helped other people deepen their writing practice, I realized that I provided to other writers what I was looking for and couldn’t find. Ironically, this insight led me back into the multi-billion dollar coaching industry where I spent a few years, and several thousands of dollars, working with business coaches to become a “writing coach.”
In its simplest terms, “writing coach” or “book coach” describes what I do, and most people are familiar with those terms and know whether or not that is something they are looking for. But being a lover and shaper of words, and someone who is forever interested in using words to access what lives beyond language (the consciousness created by the language we use), the term “coach” has never felt right in describing what I do to support people who write or want to write.
Coach, as it’s used today, arises from the context of competitive sports. It is literally defined in Webster’s Dictionary as: one who instructs players in the fundamentals of competitive sport and directs strategy. With this comes the implication of winning, competing, beating others, as well as coming out on top, and arriving at the top of one’s game. The consciousness created is inherently hierarchical, competitive (or at minimum comparative), and steeped in zero-sum thinking. Winner take all. Loser be loser.
What I discovered going deep into the coaching and “self-help” industries is that this consciousness lives under the surface there too, in subtle ways. You see it in the “three step” formulas for arriving at that thing you want, as well as in the “rags to riches” stories that coaches often share–the narratives that say, I once struggled like you, but then I found the right coach, the right mindset, had all the breakthroughs, stepped through every window of opportunity that came my way, and am now realizing my biggest dreams and living my best life as my best (and inherently better) self! These stories and frameworks create and perpetuate an over simplified approach to arriving at the place you’ve been wanting to get to all along, having the answers, and in a sense winning the game.
But writing doesn’t work like that.
To write is to lay yourself bare on the page. To write is to attempt to express something that you feel but aren’t yet able to fully articulate, whether it comes from your own life experience or via a character that shows up and wants to speak through you. It’s a life-long journey, a discovery, a process of embarking on a path that doesn’t fully reveal itself and where it’s going to take you. And writing, quality writing, can’t be forced or rushed and takes the time it takes. It’s gloriously rewarding and excruciatingly hard to do.
While having goals to aim for is necessary, and stories and experiences of growth and change are important to share, common coaching tactics, methods, and focal points perpetuate an oversimplified and often time-sensitive approach of arriving at a predetermined goal or destination. They also create a constant sense of needing to become someone other than who you are, someone better than the brilliant, fallible, wondrous, and tragic human you are in this moment, in order to feel like you have value and can express and contribute something meaningful.
Guide at its root means “know” and is the source of English “wise” and “witness.” It’s defined in Webster’s Dictionary as: one who leads or directs another in his/her/their way, someone that provides a person with guiding information. Guide implies intimate knowledge of the way and an understanding of the unclear path ahead, with all its beautiful meadows, difficulties, vast vistas, and dangers.
A guide doesn’t focus on the destination or the goal alone. A guide doesn’t tell you that you’re not ready, that you missed your opportunity, or that you don’t have the right mindset to do what it takes. A guide isn’t in the game of competing, comparing, winning or losing.
A guide helps you discover many pathways, many destinations. A guide does tend to goals, but focuses on the whole journey and how to navigate the complex and changing terrain so you might arrive where you want to go and also be taken to places you didn’t know were possible, or places you didn’t even know you needed to go.
A guide shares information and resources and offers direction and orientation to the real, alive, complex territory ahead. A guide bears witness, extends a helping hand when things get rough, knows that who you are is already enough even though you will grow along the way, and a guide trusts that you already have everything you need to make the journey because they too have gone down the road before you with the same doubts, vulnerabilities, insecurities, and questions and have found their way, word by precious word.
The work of writing is learning how to get comfortable moving on an uncertain and unclear path and to begin to delight in the mysteries of not really knowing where you are going, while finding the inner and outer resources you need to make discoveries and meet what arises along the way. There are many departures and arrivals. A guide helps you prepare for, meet, and adapt to those unknown and changing conditions, the moment to moment storms, deviations, delays, shadow figures and beasts lurking in the thickets. A guide knows that there is visible and invisible support that appears along the way and how to help you find it.
Writing provides many windows of opportunity to step through, holds a myriad of thresholds to cross, and unearths many different obstacles, mind sets, and ways of making meaning. To be a writer is to take responsibility for learning how to render the full complexity of any character or situation, to express wisdom by revealing the relationship between seemingly disparate things, and to not over simplify things or express a singular point of view.
There is no one path, no right way to do it, there is only the path before you, the one your soul calls you to.
As a Writing Guide, I offer what my first writing coach couldn’t give me. I offer structures and support needed to understand the writing cycle (the terrain) and how that cycle works in your own life (the journey) so you can live within that cycle from a place of sustainability and devotion. I call this cycle the Restorative Writing Cycle.
As a Writing Guide, I don’t promise to have all the answers, but I do know the psychological, emotional, and spiritual territory you will cross when you express something that comes from your soul. I understand what it means beyond the words on the page. I promise to show you how to deepen your writing practice and create a writing life that can help you reach goals and complete projects. I can promise to show you the way I’ve come and what I’ve learned from walking the path for many, many years, a path I continue to walk alongside you.