The Perks of Being a Writing Coach

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Coaching, On writing.

rainbow painted railroad tracks

It was the last Saturday of spring break. I could feel the window on all this beautiful extra time about to close. I even woke up thinking about an idea I’d had the other day (work-related) and wanted to move on first thing Monday. Oh, yeah, I thought waiting for the coffee water to boil. I need to make that form so that I have it ready for the kids next week because we’ve only got about a month to sell enough literary magazines to cover our costs. I even started drafting the form in my head while I poured the boiling water over the grounds. I shook my head. No, not yet, I thought. Keep work out another day.

This day was the day I’d carved out for writing. The one day in all of spring break that didn’t also include spring cleaning tasks or travel plans. I would do a coffee shop crawl, starting at the coffee shop nearest to my house, where I was set to meet a coaching client at 9:00. After our session I would stay on, then walk downtown, listening to the last couple of hours of Tar Baby for my book group Monday, and find another coffee shop to sit at and write a while. There were to be no chores, no shopping, and it wasn’t my day to cook dinner. The whole luxurious day spread out before me, hopeful.

Since we’d met two weeks ago, my client had had some run-ins with that voice creatives know so well. The voice that comes from the first time you tripped and someone laughed, the first time someone offered unsolicited critique not out of empathy, but rather out of arrogance, and you took the hit not knowing just how vulnerable you’d left yourself, what an easy target you’d offered. This voice is terribly afraid of vulnerability. This voice thinks that you do this work because there is something measurable that you’ll get in return and it feeds on your limiting beliefs.

This client happens to be reading Writing Down the Bones and was just coming to a part about how to handle this voice whenever it starts making noise. The fact that he could read this thing that was happening in a book, that the book could be saying that this is normal, everyone experiences this, was a balm. It gave me goosebumps to think that this one book written by my original writing coach back when I was sixteen and very insecurely trying to find my voice and my form, when I was just beginning to explore the possibility that I might be a writer could still thirty years later be nudging along a man discovering writing in retirement–that is nothing short of magic.

This client has been showing up to every session with new words, new inspirations, and new insights. The truth was, on that Saturday, I’d stalled in my writing. For two months I’d been barely making time for my own creative work because other aspects of my life (work, mostly) took more than their share. It was temporary, I knew, and I’d asked for it. One of the things that had occupied my writing time was my part in producing the literary magazine at the high school where I teach, a project I love and that feeds my writing soul in other ways even while it takes up my writing time. This is part of why I’d carved out this whole day and invented this new idea of a coffee shop crawl (an idea I love and will return to) in order to stoke my creative fires to the roaring fire I am now craving.

I reviewed the three-month goals my client had set since we’re coming up to the end of that time and emphasized how he’d excelled in meeting them. I gave encouragement and advice. I empathized with that voice, affirming what he’d read in Goldberg’s book. We all encounter that voice. These thoughts are normal and human, and you are not your thoughts. We set new goals for next time.

The transition from coach to my work shed light for me on how our own work is propped up by showing up for others. I dove right in. All that time talking about creativity, all that time trying to focus and inspire had left me also focused and inspired. I got right to it. I finished the chapter I’d been terrified of, stuck on. Another writing friend met me, and we wrote through three half-hour timers at that coffee shop, checking in between sessions. He wrote three poems. I finished a chapter.

By the time I left that coffee shop and began walking toward the next, it was noon. How the day really played out was that I never made it to the second coffee shop, because in chatting with Chris we both realized that it might be more important on this particular Saturday to show up at the Capitol to stand with others who are deeply concerned about the direction our country is headed. And yet, I was satisfied. The compromise was an easy one to make. I had finished the chapter. More importantly, I had tended to the fire. It would keep burning.

The coffee shop crawl will be making a comeback. It may be a theme for this spring and summer. The walking between stops is critical for me because walking has always been part of my creative practice. I promise I’ll take you along on the next one here on this blog so that you can join me in a way. Because that really is what I’m driving at here. The perks of being a writing coach are that what you give does indeed come back to you. The time you spend chatting with other creatives, participating in accountability or critique groups, attending exhibitions or open mics—those times are nourishing. Keep your palms up during those times, ready to receive with an open heart and mind, and then get down to doing your work.

I also work as a writing coach and love helping writers gain confidence, set goals, and develop their work. For more information on coaching, email me at eatyourwords.lizshine@gmail.com.

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.