Book Coaching 101, Part 5: Creating a Safe Space for Your Writer
A discussion of one of the foundational elements of book coaching.
This post is part of the Book Coaching 101 Series
Part 1: What’s a Book Coach?
Part 2: The 7 Steps to Building a Successful Book Coaching Business
Part 3: Shaking Off the "I’ll Take Whatever I Can Get" Business Mindset
One of the most popular blog posts I have ever written is The 4 Hidden Dangers of Writing Groups. I wrote it in 2015 for Jane Friedman, and people still sometimes reference it when they talk about how they found me or began to follow me.
Writers are usually first horrified at the idea that their writing group may be doing damage, but as they sit with that concept, and begin to consider the possibility, they often come to see that it’s true. (Not always, not always!! If your writing group is awesome, you are the exception and you should cherish it and do whatever you can to preserve it.)
Writers are so desperate for the community of other writers and for honest and effective feedback on their work that they will tolerate an environment that doesn’t offer any real support and causes them to question their skill, their ambition, their chances of bringing a book into the marketplace, and their sanity.
Just a few weeks ago, Jane Friedman ran a post by novelist Andromeda Romano-Lax on similar dangers lurking in famous writer writing retreats; it’s a very good post that urges writers to beware. It seems that famous writers don’t always think about the power they hold over writers and the harm they might be doing.
I believe understanding your power and your responsibility is a foundational skill for a book coach.
In the section of my book coach certification course on the Foundations of Book Coaching, I have two lessons that address the power and responsibility a book coach has in their relationship with their writers. The first one addresses the core principles of giving editorial feedback.
The 7 Core Principles of Giving Editorial Feedback.
Those principles are:
Be on their side. Believe the writer is capable of creating the book they are envisioning and offer your feedback with compassion for the difficult work they are doing.
Present opinions with evidence. Give text-based evidence for what you are suggesting.
Make a commitment to be honest. Writers deserve to know how their work is coming across and whether or not it’s commercially viable. You have to deliver this truth with compassion, but they can’t get better if they don’t know the truth
Give good notes. This is a direct nod to Ed Catmul, author of Creativity, Inc., from the process of feedback used by Pixar’s Braintrust.
Ask good questions. Being curious and asking what the writer means or is trying to do is how we help them clarify the vision.
Prioritize the biggest problems first. Our job is to guide the writer with authority and one of the primary ways we do this is by organizing our feedback by the severity of issues.
Lift your eyes off the page. We can’t just be good editors. We have to look at the horizon, at the marketplace our writer’s books will be born into. We have to know what’s going on.
The 5 Core Principles of Providing Emotional Support
The second lesson on the power and responsibility of book coaching is called The 5 Core Principles of Providing Emotional Support. It is not enough to give good feedback. Book coaches are working with the writer as well as the writing and what that means is that we are managing emotions over time.
The principles of providing emotional support include:
Writing is emotional work. Anyone who gets into the business of book coaching needs to understand that writers are going to have big feelings—big hopes and dreams, big doubts. It comes with the territory.
You are not responsible for the writer’s feelings. This is an important point for all adults to understand, but especially in a coaching relationship.
You are a coach, not a therapist. Our work is centered on the writing of books, not therapeutic healing. Writers may feel a sense of healing as a byproduct of the work, but it is not the point of the work. We are not qualified to offer therapy.
Book coaching is emotional work. We have a lot of big feelings, too, mostly because we are nurturing the creation of something fragile and alive, and there is so much about the creative process we can’t control.
You are not responsible for the success of the book. All you can do is help the writer define the outcome they seek (to finish, to improve their skills, to pin their book to the page, to pitch) and that they can control.
The Purpose Of These Lessons Is To Learn How To Build A Safe Space For Writers
Writers are incredibly vulnerable. They are making something out of their imaginations and their experience, and preparing to offer it to a world that might be indifferent, judgemental, or full of praise (which comes with its own problems.)
They may have had the experience of being belittled for their writing, or silenced, or shamed, or dismissed.
Their entire identity may be wrapped up in the work they are doing. I have lost count of the number of times a writer has told me that they want to write and publish a book before they die. They actually use those words. They believe deep down that they are a writer but they have not yet written anything to prove it to themselves. They are desperate not to let themselves down.
Making a safe space for writers means making it possible for them to feel all these feelings as they try things out, explore how their work can be better, and admit how much they care.
It means taking them as seriously as they are taking themselves, even if their skill has not yet reached the level of their taste. That idea of the gap between someone’s ability to discern what is good and to produce what is good comes from this brilliant Ira Glass quote:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
The lesson about being on the writer’s side is about being a bridge for them as they build the skills they need to write something that doesn’t disappoint them. It’s about making sure they don’t quit on themselves.
What a Safe Space Looks Like
I was recently analyzing a call where Author Accelerator certified coach Shannon Sexton was coaching a writer on her Blueprint (a 14-step method of inquiry I developed to help writers of fiction, nonfiction or memoir pin their idea to the page, either before they start to write or before they start to revise.) I was breaking this call down for a lesson for other coaches, and I was marveling at the skillful way Shannon held a safe space for her client.
She invited her writer to talk about what she wanted her book to be, and the struggles she was having in bringing that reality to life.
She was actively listening—nodding and commenting as the writer spoke.
She was reflecting what she heard the client say—summarizing a change the writer had made to the point of her book.
She was fully engaged in a nuanced discussion of what was “true”—this was a coaching call around a memoir where the idea of truth is of utmost importance, but the story in question had supernatural elements that non-Western cultures might consider “not true” so the discussion was rich—and did not rush the writer in any way.
She was honest about the weaknesses in the story and what needed to be shored up.
At one point when the writer asked Shannon her opinion, Shannon gave it enthusiastically. She was not afraid to have an opinion or to offer it. It was not “Whatever you want, writer.” It was “I love that and here is why. I love it” (The why is the evidence I mentioned in the principles above.)
She guided the writer on what to prioritize to make the work better and what to work on for the next deadline.
It was a beautiful and powerful exchange. I could see the writer’s confidence grow as she sorted out the issues in her story with another human who cared deeply about her work.
Sit With People’s Stories
A safe space doesn’t mean everything always goes well. I have said things that upset my writers and caused them to shut down. I have had to apologize for making incorrect assumptions or erring on giving too much advice. I have had many writers cry during coaching—with relief, and with despair, and a whole variety of other emotions.
Crying makes sense. These are people writing about sickness and death, about mental illness and divorce, about love and longing, about leadership and legacies, about topics they have spent their lifetime studying and teaching.
The skill that is required is the ability to sit with people’s stories and their feelings. To just sit there and breathe and be with them as they sort it out, as they write it down, as they make their way.
It turns out that this ability to make a safe space for writers and to hold that space is often more important than anything you might teach someone about how to write a scene or how to write a more compelling paragraph. These writing skills are obviously important, and a certain stage of the creative process they need to be the primary focus, but they are not the reason people write.
People write because they have something to say.
They write because they want to be heard.
Our job is to create a container where they can safely write what they really want to write before they are convinced they can write it.
Some Good Books That Explore These Topics
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses and The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez are both about academic settings and the historical problems with the workshop model, but there is a lot in these books to teach and inspire book coaches. I highly recommend them both.
Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive by Joni Cole. Funny and wise, this book is a primer on how to give and receive feedback. It’s a great book to add to the bookshelf for understanding the work of coaching writers.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by sisters Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. This is a masterful book on feelings and how to feel them. It’s invaluable for book coaches, writers, and all humans. (If you just want to listen to a podcast episode instead of read the whole book, check out the one the authors did with Brene Brown.)
A Poll!
Hey, so I am making an ebook on pricing book coaching packages and was thinking I might offer a webinar on it, too—or maybe a mini-series of webinars because it’s a 55-page book! I can’t do this until I finish the memoir course and take a vacation, so it won’t happen until May or June at the earliest, but I thought I would ask who might be interested in something like this. It would be fee-based, with a discount of some kind for subscribers.
"Writers are so desperate for the community of other writers" Writers are desperate for any community at all : )