None of the writing coaches and counselors are hugely successful full-time writers, and that's quite fine. We do not expect chemistry teachers to be brilliant chemists, we do not expect P.E. teachers to be Olympic gymnasts, and we do not expect teachers of singing to be triple-platinum pop stars or venerated opera primadonnas.
(We certainly don't expect full-time successful writers to teach everyone for free like Uncle Jim does, but he's got a considerable halo over his head. You buy a short story of his yet, at least? I did, last week, from Smashwords.)
Knowing the basics is what counts. Teachers teach--their job is through knowing the basics to help you learn the basics too, faster and with less dead ends than if on your own. And if we want teachers to be good, if we want good people to go into teaching--there have to be rewards.
So I think that's the basic criteria: stuff that instantly makes sense plus at least one book or a few short stories published by legit publishers or self-published to considerable success--that's like seeing their higher education thesis/graduation certificate--means teacher is good.
Nothing published, or only with the likes of Publish America, or badly designed unedited crap self-published on Kindle--probably bad teacher, at best parroting stuff learned elsewhere on the net.
From what I saw Ms. Lakin looks of the good kind. Good luck to everyone.
