Why You Need a Creative Coach to Help You With Your Book
"Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it. The writers I know who stopped writing didn't run out of ideas. They ran out of protected time. The world is structurally hostile to the interior life, and it will take everything you give it and ask for more. The work requires a ruthless, almost antisocial commitment to the hours. And when those hours go badly, which they will, often and without warning, you show up the next day anyway, because the only way out is through." — Zadie Smith
We sat down to talk about what a creative coach actually does, and why so many writers wait years before finally asking for help. Here's Kate Martin Williams, co-founder of Bloomsday Literary, on the work of getting a book from dream to done.
What Does a Creative Coach Do?
Phuc: What do you do?
Kate: I'm a creative coach. I help people take their book-length projects from dream to done, and just as important, help them become the kind of person who finishes what they start. Buoyed by Zadie Smith's admonition, we help you find the way through.
Phuc: Why should someone consider hiring you?
Kate: The answer's as varied as the excuses people give for not having written their book yet. So many of our clients come in at their wit's end. You may be doubting your ability to finish. Heck, you may be doubting your ability to get started. Getting over that hump, the fear of failure, is the obstacle we tackle first.
The Two Traps Writers Fall Into
Phuc: What are some of the areas of difficulty a creative coach might help a writer to overcome?
Kate: If you believe Zadie Smith, which I do to an extent, 90% of writing is staying off the internet. But even writers who manage that mostly fall into one of two traps: an ill-defined resistance that's keeping them from moving ahead, or a lack of clarity around the project itself.
Resistance ambushes writers at every level, seasoned veteran and newbie alike. A creative coach works with you to identify what's getting in the way. It could be crippling self-doubt, not having found your identity as a writer, or even trying to write the wrong project.
Building a Practice You Can Actually Keep
Phuc: What’s the plan?
Kate: We help clients develop and stick to a consistent writing practice. Building that practice is a lot like yoga or training for a marathon. You can't expect to sit down and write 3,000 words a day for a month (RIP NaNoWriMo) any more than you can expect to walk into a yoga room and do a headstand on day one, or run 26 miles the first time you lace up.
And yet we constantly meet writers who've given up on projects because they've only got 5,000 words, or because they haven't opened the file collecting dust on their hard drive. We meet you where you are in your season of life and figure out what a feasible, consistent writing practice looks like for you. Then we keep you accountable. We help you identify roadblocks as they arise, chart the timeline for completion, and find motivation when enthusiasm inevitably wanes. It's all part of the mystery and heartache of a writer's life, and we're here every step of the way.
Accountability and Community
We also run writing cohorts so clients can share the victories and the setbacks together. We've found that a group of people engaged in the same creative pursuit, combined with one-on-one mentorship, generates momentum, kinship, and results that last.
Getting Clear on Your Book's Purpose
Phuc: What is another barrier?
Kate: The other stumbling block is clarity. Writers often abandon projects, even ones that start with passion, because they never fully worked out what the book is trying to do. We spend a lot of time helping clients answer a few essential questions.
For nonfiction: What problem is your book solving, and for whom? How does your work solve it?
For fiction: What's the central conflict? What's standing between your character and their goal? What's at stake?
And for everyone: Can you capture the urgency of your book in one sentence? That question is a doozy, but answering it gives you a roadmap you can actually follow when the writing gets hard.
The Real Change Isn't Just the Manuscript
Here's the part clients don't expect going in. By the end of the work, most of them have changed more than their draft. They've changed how they see themselves.
Most people who get stuck are working through something deeper than plot or structure. The real obstacle is whether they believe they're the kind of person who writes books. Working through resistance and working through clarity are both forms of craft work, and underneath them, they're identity work. That's why so many of our clients leave with more than a finished draft. They leave with a different answer when someone asks them what they do.
Five Questions Worth Asking Yourself
How often do you think about this book idea?
Why does it matter to you?
Have you been able to consistently make time at your writing desk to do this work?
Is it done yet?
How come?
Questions one through four are usually easy to answer. You might have a lot to say about question two especially. Question five is the hard one.
If you can't answer it honestly, that's usually where the real work starts, and the real work is almost always about whether you believe you're the kind of person who writes books. That's what we do at Bloomsday Literary: we help writers move from a stalled draft to a finished book, and from doubting they're a writer to knowing they are one. If this sounds like where you are, get in touch with us and let's talk about what's next.
The actual quote? "Most of my day is spent trying not to look at the internet. Writing is actually a very small part of the day; the rest of the day is a psychological war against the phone, the laptop, the news."