Coaching
Helping you find your voice
Writing, we are often led to believe, is a solitary endeavor. This could not be further from the truth. Drafting is a solitary endeavor; writing is collaborative to the bone.
One thing I’ve learned on my journey as a writer is that writers need mirrors – and mirrors, and mirrors, and mirrors. As a writing coach, I’m able to give you the critical, external perspective on your work (and work habits!) that can make all the difference in the competitive environment of modern publication.
Unlike a hierarchical “teaching” model, coaching provides you with holistic guidance and empowers you to make your writing your absolute best writing – key word: your. Working with me entails open, dynamic conversations about your work, spanning everything from your highest purpose and vision for your essay or manuscript to the internal logic of your narrative to the nitty gritty details of your writing schedule. We’ll discuss structure, style, and maybe even syntax – but we’ll always, always discuss.
Coaching
Coaching is non-directive, which essentially means that I don’t give out easy answers (hint: there are none anyway). I don’t write for you. Much better, I provide the structure, guidance, and open conversation (let’s just say environment) for your own brilliant writing to unfold organically. If you are the gardener and your work is the garden, with my coaching, together, we will cultivate the environment to produce your best work.
I offer personal coaching sessions face-to-face and via Skype as well as inclusive, female-oriented workshops in the greater Atlanta area. Helping women of all backgrounds tell their stories gives me great joy, and as such I aim to make my workshops accessible and accommodating.
Workshops
I am also in the early stages of development for an outreach program that would allow me to bring no-cost writing workshops to deeply marginalized and/or impoverished groups of women (for instance, incarcerated women or women fleeing domestic abuse).
Storytelling is perhaps the most ancient healing modality there is (both for the teller and the listener), and as someone who grew up below the poverty line I refuse to accept the idea that the art of self-expression must remain exclusive to those lacking a privileged economic status or an Ivy League education.
If you are an emerging writer of creative nonfiction and looking for the tools and direction necessary to tell your story to the world, please remember that your voice matters. And I would love to help you find it.
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
~Mary Oliver
