Book Coaching

Knowing how to do a task and completing that task are two very different things. Knowing how to execute one recipe does not ensure you’ll be able to execute another recipe –unless we’re talking taking it out back and shooting it.

Book coaching focuses on helping a writer complete a project, making sure that product functions as needed, and that it will find an audience once it’s all said and done.

Goal Setting

The first and worst mistake to make when attempting to write a book is overpromising yourself. This comes in the twin forms of telling yourself it will take less time than reality dictates, and telling yourself it will look as good on the page as it does in your head.

Runner up to this poisoned apple is telling yourself that you will commit x hours per day to the project. Rather than set goals of time or form or effort, set goals that allow you to build up from one step to a whole.

Chapter

Chapters are already ambiguous units. They can be any length and cover as few or as many topics as a writer chooses. They are more of a formatting formality than a concern. As milestones go, any time you feel you’re done, you can call it a chapter and move on. This builds confidence and inches towards the project’s completion.

Section

A chapter breaks down into sections, a collection of scenes that occur around a theme or a place. Focusing on a section lets you think through the parameters of how several scenes fit together and the emotional tone that generates. If you can make a section feel right, you can make a book do the same.

Scene

A scene can be as simple as a person walking through a door or as complex as a full play (Waiting for Godot, basically). It is easy to write a scene. You probably create and think through scenarios everyday dozens of times. These units combine character, place, and action into a digestible unit. Linking a few scenes together is just a matter of some transitional sentences and descriptions and you have completed a section.

Page

It is one page. It can be filled in minutes or hours. It can be an hourly goal, a daily goal, or a weekly goal. Pages can be completed while waiting for other things in life or transitioning from one place to another (assuming you’re not driving). Filling a page takes as much time as you give it. The work expands to fill the time. So, pick a reasonable time and if you have to force yourself to finish a page, do. Editing can make any half-baked, hastily scribbled page into something.

Problem Solving

Momentum is important in life and in writing. Losing momentum by hitting a series of blocks and delays can easily lead to an abandoned project, yet one more item in the pile of ‘I’ll get back to it someday’. Learning new techniques and go-tos can help you avoid stalling out and means the difference between a book out the door and a story in your head.

No Ideas

As a writer, you never actually find yourself in a position where you have no ideas. What you don’t have are good ideas, workable ideas, ideas that will get you from one scene to another.

Bouncing ideas off another person can be helpful for picking up momentum and not losing focus. Additionally, being given bad ideas can help you zero-in on what you want. Sometimes we don’t know where we want to go, but we usually know where we don’t want to be.

Can’t Produce Effect

Another amorphous, angular stumbling block for a writer is wanting to create an effect or illicit an emotion and not knowing how to do it. It is troubling enough to want to do something that you can’t, it is even worse when you see an author do it and are trying to recreate it. When someone makes something look easy it can make learning that much harder.

Going through the granular process of building up an effect helps you reverse—engineer techniques so you can utilize them yourself and create your own.

Am I Right for This?

As creative people, writers tend to lose perspective and follow thoughts to terminal conclusions that are out of proportion and unwarranted. When facing a challenging section one of the first doubts is voiced as “Who am I to write this?”

Assuming someone else can (or has) done a better job telling this story is a trap. You are right for this because you picked it up and carried it. Anyone who wrote something before you went through the same steps, they didn’t start at the ending where they have renown and knowledge, they started lost, uncertain, and asking themselves the same question.

Finishing a Book

It is far easier to deal with the sprawling nature of a book project by breaking it down. Sill there are distinct phases one goes through when taking on the task. Being aware of these phases can help a writer plan for the ups and many downs of the work ahead.

The Opening Page

The first page is one of the most difficult to write. Ideas and playing around come easy, the moment you want a project to take a shape, to be a book, it has to be ‘right’. By creating that first page after the project is ‘real’ you are taking all the lovely ideas and forcing them into the light where they can be seen, and judged, by others. That fear kills many projects.

The Final Page

Likewise, the final page creates another kind of difficulty. As long as the book is ‘in progress’ any mistakes can be excused, any poor planning can still be made up for, and any abandoned characters can still be rescued.

Once the final page is done, the project must stand on its own.

The Unbounded Middle

The process is the process. Working on a book takes a certain shape and pacing. There are hard days and great moments. There are boring pages and lightning bolts. If you can learn to enjoy the process, to be mindful of the work but not oppressed by it, you can relax and let your talents and toolbox carry you.

Like everything else, this can be its own burden. Chasing a writer’s high has led more than a few into spirals. Once again, it is adherence to plans and goals that push the work forward.

Reality Check

A book is never done, you just stop working on it. Whether the product that remains goes into a drawer or into the public is a matter of preference.

To give your work a better chance of finding an audience, it helps to understand what the world of books looks like now, and which perennial features on which to rely.

Example: Working with a book coach isn’t so different from working with a physical trainer. You sign up for it, you hate the individual sessions and the demand to put in effort, but if you stick with it you love the results.

Readability

The most important thing a book needs to do is be readable. Esoteric academic tomes can be chock full of important, amazing information but they don’t tend to get read. That means the important information doesn’t find an audience. Meanwhile, dime store novels can be found on a shelf in every home.

Don’t talk down to an audience but don’t prove you can use forty words where four will suffice.

Marketability

A well-written book about the pastoral romances of the Flemings can be a classic. It can be the kind of book that is read by generations and adapted a dozen different ways. What it can’t be is written in current year. The subject matter isn’t irrelevant, but the packaging is, that’s why the adaptations lean into modern settings and more contemporary sensibilities.

Novelty

A book doesn’t need to reinvent literature, spawn a new genre, or sell a million copies. What it needs to do is bring something new to the world. Having something to say or finding a new way of expressing ideas can do a lot. Many popular books are old stories with a fresh coat of paint. The craft of writing is to make the old feel new. Hence the title of the form: novel.

Perspective

Ultimately, the goal of a book coach is to provide perspective. To jump into that trench with you and fight the same fight. They understand what you are going through. As a writer, it can feel (and even be) impossible to explain to someone what you are struggling with and why. They will offer platitudes but rarely understanding or solutions.

A book coach knows. They have been there. They are probably there on a project right now. And that is how you push forward with confidence, confident that there’s no such thing as no problems but there’s always another solution too.