Coaching for Writers

My approach as a writing coach

Above all, as EB White put it: I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing, it doesn’t matter how well you’re writing, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are – if you’re writing, or you want to write, I respect and value that.

These are the foundations of my coaching practice:

• We have to write what wants to be written – what we ache to write.
• What we write is valid and important and valuable.
• Perfection is not only non-existent, it’s not something to strive for.
• Rules can be helpful guidelines, but we can bend them and break them and rewrite them.
• It’s okay to be lost, or fragile, or anxious, or frustrated in our writing.
• We don’t have to share what we write – and when we do share, we can do that in any way that feels good to us.
• We don’t have to finish what we begin. We can move on – and we can go back.
• We don’t have to write only this kind of story or poem in this style; we can write anything we want.
• We don’t have to win competitions or sign publishing contracts or sell loads of books or get heaps of five-star reviews or build an army of followers on social media. We can just… write.

Themes in my coaching

My coaching is shaped by the writer’s needs and wishes; they decide what we’ll explore together. These are some of the themes that my coaching can cover:

* Please keep in mind that I’m a writing coach, not a counsellor. I am, however, deeply empathetic and compassionate, and have lived experience of anxiety, OCD and PTSD. And I know well how much writing can improve wellbeing.