If I was an athletic coach and this was a website page developed to discuss the benefits of skills coaching, no one would be surprised to hear advice like this:
When the focus is on writing, language, communication, it's a different story. Professionals in every field have told me that they are expected to write well and that they are surprised by how hard it can be. When I ask how often they write, they say, "as little as I can get away with!"
No one expects an athlete to take home Olympic gold on a regimen of "as little practice as I can get away with." That's the starting point of my writing coach practice: writers need to write. Next, I work with the writer to diagnose problem patterns and develop a plan to correct them. And we work. The writer writes; I provide critique; the writer writes some more.
I take a sensible "triage" approach to the process. There's no point, for example, in flagging quotation mark misuse if the document content is poorly organized and incorrect. An artist friend expresses this concept visually: "don't start the painting of the house with the doorknobs." By concentrating on clearing the bigger obstacles out of the way, we make room for clarity and coherence. Then we go after those pesky quotation marks.
See typical coaching commentary.
Submit your writing sample for coaching
- Understand the rules of the game
- Visualize perfect performance
- Practice basic skills
When the focus is on writing, language, communication, it's a different story. Professionals in every field have told me that they are expected to write well and that they are surprised by how hard it can be. When I ask how often they write, they say, "as little as I can get away with!"
No one expects an athlete to take home Olympic gold on a regimen of "as little practice as I can get away with." That's the starting point of my writing coach practice: writers need to write. Next, I work with the writer to diagnose problem patterns and develop a plan to correct them. And we work. The writer writes; I provide critique; the writer writes some more.
I take a sensible "triage" approach to the process. There's no point, for example, in flagging quotation mark misuse if the document content is poorly organized and incorrect. An artist friend expresses this concept visually: "don't start the painting of the house with the doorknobs." By concentrating on clearing the bigger obstacles out of the way, we make room for clarity and coherence. Then we go after those pesky quotation marks.
See typical coaching commentary.
Submit your writing sample for coaching