How do I find a creative writing coach?

Finding a creative writing coach that fits you correctly is very important. With the right coach, your writing can soar, taking you exactly where you want to go and beyond. With the wrong coach, you’ll find yourself stuck in the mud and wasting money – and possibly losing motivation, too.

Here’s how to make the right choices and find the writing coach for you.

Match your goals to their specialism

The first thing to realise is that no two writing coaches are the same. Each one will bring a different range of skills and styles to the table, so you have to find the one that aligns most closely with your writing goals.

For example, my coaching is based fully around the process of writing a book. While I do coach both fiction and non-fiction writers – since I also write in both forms myself – I’m not the best coach for someone who wants to write essays or get better at social media captions. Or, for that matter, blog posts!

My ideal client is someone who wants to:

• Get better at writing long-form book-based content
• Understand how to plot or structure their book
• Learn how to go through the editing process, and when to hand it off to a professional
• Get to grips with the publishing industry and figure out which routes are best for them
• Start thinking about marketing tactics and why their book is going to succeed

If your goals lie outside of these parameters, you’d be better off looking for someone else. To find your ideal coach, make sure that their skills and what they teach are aligned with what you want to learn.

Check out their success rate

As a writer, I’ve looked into hiring a coach many times, myself. I’m the first to admit that I’m terrible when it comes to marketing – though I may know the theory, I often forget to actually tell anyone that I’ve written a new book! I champion the books of my clients when I’m permitted to do so, and I champion books written by authors I admire, but I just seem to have a disconnect when it comes to championing my own.

But when looking for a coach to help me out in this area, I see the same thing over and over again: that the coaches who are trying to get me to hire them actually have fewer book sales than I do. How much can they really teach me, if I am already more successful?

(And – perhaps – better at marketing than I think?)

When you’re looking for a writing coach, first check out their actual writing. Have they seen any success themselves? If they haven’t, how can you trust that they know what to teach you to help you reach success?

Interview them while they interview you

The first step in any coaching relationship is to actually get into a conversation together. Whether this might be a phone call, a video meeting, or face-to-face, is up to you and your coach.

When you have that conversation, remember that it goes both ways. They will be interviewing you to find out whether you are the right fit for their program – as coaches, we don’t like to take on clients who probably won’t succeed with our coaching. It’s counter-productive, a waste of both of our time and your money, and would be a pretty shady thing to do to another human being.

But, at the same time, you are also interviewing them. This is a really key thing to keep in mind as you chat. Are they the kind of person you can trust to take you to new places? Do you feel like you would be safe in their hands? Will they encourage and nurture you in the ways that you need?

Get their credentials, if you don’t already have them, and find out what makes them special. Why should you choose them over someone else? If you can’t find a good answer to that, your search may not be over.

Finding a creative writing coach has to feel right to you – after all, this is an investment in your future. If you aren’t sure, keep looking. I wish you the best of luck in your search – and if you’re looking for help in getting a book out there, feel free to hop on with me for a quick consultation – interview me while I interview you!