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creative coaching
My first mentor as a graduate student was everyone’s first mentor, and she saw it as her responsibility to prepare us for the cruel and unforgiving nature of the literary world by felling us with insults. I believe she kept a thesaurus designed for this purpose next to her desk, which I suspect she’d bedazzled with serpents’ eyes. She hated everything everyone wrote. She did not offer suggestions or encouragement; that was not her job.
My job is to believe in your work as much as I do my own. To root for it and to root for you.
Coaching Options are available in six and twelve week bundles. Each option offers writers a structured framework to begin, to develop, or to revise a body of work (novel, memoir, short story or essay collection). Our work together will be tailored to your specific project and will include weekly phone conversations, writing assignments, reading recommendations, micro and macro level written feedback, and editing. Each option is renewable at the close of the contract.
Six-Weeks: Maybe you have a project you’d like to begin or a project that you’d like to finish. It’s an idea. It’s a paragraph. A collection of sentences scribbled onto the backs of receipts. Maybe you’ve written a rough draft of a short story or an essay—maybe you’ve submitted it to literary journals and contests but haven’t yet placed it. Maybe you have a fresh pen and a blank slate and a dream of what could happen when the two meet. This is the option for you.
We will begin with a phone conversation to discuss your project and its scope (up to 25-30 pages for a six-week session) and to map the route you will take to complete it. Each week, you will send me new pages (up to 2,000 words), and I will offer you written feedback, following up with a weekly phone call to talk shop. By the end of week three, if you have been submitting your weekly word count, you will have a completed first draft. For the second half of the session, we will concentrate on revision, and in the final week, I will edit it for you.
If you are ready to commit to a writing routine, in six-weeks you will have a finished product, a creation to celebrate. ($1695)
Twelve-Weeks: There is a book you need to write, have always wanted to write—maybe even have started to write. A collection of stories. An assemblage of essays. A memoir about the year everything changed. A comic novel, a mystery, a travelogue. You haven’t met the characters yet, or they are all clamoring for your attention. And there are memories, pictures you want us to see—secrets and lies, recipes and love—sickness and joy and redemption. You are looking for structure, organization, and accountability. You are looking for feedback, for signs that you are on the right track. You have the time to commit to a weekly writing schedule, and you have prioritized everything else in your life except for your writing—until now. This is the option for you.
We will begin with a phone conversation to discuss your project and your writing goals. We will establish a plan that fits your needs (including weekly phone calls, writing instruction, reading recommendations, and written feedback).We will devote three months to unearthing your writing voice and your story and to completing the first phase of your book-length project. ($2995)
(Space is limited to ten writers for 12-week sessions)