Why Book Coaching?
If you read my last post, you’ll remember that one of the things I think is most critical to writing a successful novel is planning–and part of that is knowing your ‘why’? (You can download a free guide complete with exercises to help you figure that out if you sign up for my newsletter!)
So here’s one of mine: how knowing why I wanted to write my novel changed what I could see in it, and why book coaching turned out to be the right training for that.
Knowing the Novel Why
I came to book coaching thinking that I’d use what I learned on my own writing. My novel wasn’t yet what I wanted it to be but I wasn’t sure how to transform it from ‘shitty first draft’ to something that was worthy of precious bookshelf space. Some scenes had a clear cause-and-effect trajectory. But more could be summarized with the dreaded “and then this happened…”
My first trusted readers had kind words and it was good to hear them but it was clear that no one had suffered late nights and lost sleep because they had to know what happened next.
As part of diagnosing the problem, I looked to a tool from the book coaching course: the Blueprint for a Book. The very first question that it asks is, “Why Write This Book?” As Jennie Nash explains, articulating that gives your story its power—readers feel the why even when they can’t name it.
That was a lightbulb moment. I understood why the behemoth first draft of my own novel, as precious as it was to me, wasn’t working the way it should. More importantly, I understood how to fix it.
Digging Deep
Since that time, I’ve generated pages on why I want to write this specific book, what it was that drew me to the story in the first place, why it resonates with me, why I think other people will find it interesting and relevant to today (even though it is set at the turn of the eighteenth century).
I won’t lie—this can be tough stuff. In those ‘why’ pages, I wrote about things that I’d probably only said aloud to my therapist. There were tears and no small amount of anxiety. But it also felt powerful to name these what I care about deeply. If I get some of that onto the page, I’ll have done my job.
Now, when I find myself stuck on a story question or trying to decide whether something has earned its place in the narrative, I go back to “why?” as a touchstone. Is this scene doing the work of illustrating what I want to say? No? Then it needs to evolve or disappear.
The ‘why’ is one of the sharpest tools you have for evaluating a manuscript—especially when you have to cut (a lot)! And you don’t need pages of it (though it can be cathartic). A sentence or two is often enough to function as your novel’s mission statement and it makes your eventual elevator pitch a lot easier to write.
Have I convinced you yet? Grab my “Know Your Why” worksheets and give it a shot!
Why I Became a Book Coach
Working through the coaching course changed how I thought about my manuscript and it changed the feedback I was giving other writers, in workshop and in my writing group.
Explaining why something was or wasn’t working. Pinpointing gaps in plot or character arc. Reading a story at the level of the whole book, and at the level of a single scene. All of it got sharper and more specific. I’d read enough over the years that finding story problems was already somewhat instinctive—now I had the framework to say exactly what the problem was and why, and to make that legible to someone else.
What coaching does that a workshop can’t
I’m fortunate—I’ve never sat through a genuinely bad writing workshop but I’ve heard the horror stories and have clients who are still rebuilding their confidence after a harsh or overly personal critique.
During certification, I got to practice coaching writers from previous workshop classes and the difference was immediate. A coaching call runs 30-60 minutes against a workshop’s three hours, and we covered more ground in less time because the conversation could go exactly where the manuscript needed it to go, not where the format dictated.
We could dig more deeply into problem areas and generate solutions that felt organic to the writer and the story they wanted to tell.
We talked about the writing itself and about what wasn’t working in the practice of writing—which can be the real obstacle.
The writer had room to ask the questions they actually had, not the one that fit the workshop’s timing or focus.
Every session ended with something concrete to do next.
That’s held up since I started coaching for real. Writers have moved from stuck and confused to producing more pages in less time. Some have complete drafts with the structural bones of several real revisions already in them
The other thing i didn’t expect
I’m an almost-off-the-charts introvert. Coaching gave me something I didn’t expect to need as much as I do: a community of people who take books and craft as seriously as I do.
Writing is solitary work. Talking about it—in a professional capacity, with people who care about getting it right—isn’t. That’s most of why I keep doing this : more stories getting finished, more writers getting unstuck, and getting to be some small part of that.