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A Coach for All Seasons: My Journey from the Coaching Sidelines into the Game By Linden Gross
My career as a writing coach almost ended as abruptly as it started. Having written a book proposal for a Harvard lecturer, I agreed to coach her in the writing of the book itself. I knew from the proposal process how disorganized she was in mind and office, as well as how convoluted and repetitious her writing was-- a style, it would seem, that is beaten into academics. The rescuer in me made me do it. Still, I had confidence that I could talk her through the steps. As her deadline loomed, however, it became clear that what she really wanted was for my fingers to do the walking on the keyboard, not hers. She wanted me to do most of her thinking as well. I bowed out of the relationship when it became clear that, despite my best efforts, she couldn't-- or wouldn't-- meet her goals. Our amicable parting became much less so upon presentation of the final bill, which has yet to be paid.
That experience might well have put me off the writing coach business forever. But taken together, the paths of my life all seemed to lead there. A writing tutor in college, upon graduation I taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the Sierra. I switched gears some years later, and got a job as an assistant editor at the Ladies' Home Journal. Actually, upon the advice of a man who had granted me an informational interview, I had applied for their associate editor opening. "You're not remotely qualified, but go for it anyway," he told me. A week after my interview, the senior editor with whom I'd interviewed called. "You're not remotely qualified for the associate editor position," she announced. "But we're going to try to fill that in house. If that works, the assistant editor position will be open. And that, you're qualified for."
As assistant editor, and associate editor a year later, I assigned stories, edited and rewrote copy, and trained interns. Ditto at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, where I worked as Special Features Editor before going freelance in 1987. I was a writing coach already, I just didn't know it.
By 2003, I had written countless magazine articles, authored two books, collaborated on two, ghostwritten two-- including national best-seller The Legacy of Luna-- and doctored, yes, two. With the big 5-0 looming in my not-so-distant future, the fact that I had yet to write that novel or the kids' books I've harbored inside was making me crazy. I imagined my tombstone: "She could have written great shit but she was too busy writing everyone else's shit." Besides, after sixteen years in a very solitary home office, the extrovert in me was yearning for a little more human contact.
An agent provided me with just that. Not my agent, mind you. I heard from a friend of a friend, who happens to be an agent in San Francisco, that another agent-- Linda Mead-- needed help organizing and writing a book proposal. I outlined her book for her, whipped the overview into shape and rewrote the sample chapter. The work wasn't exactly easy, but working with Linda was. Confessing to an obsessive tendency to re-write the book's first paragraph over and over instead of moving forward with the bulk of the text, she asked me to coach her. I agreed without a second thought. Okay, so I learn the hard way.
It could have been dejà vu all over again. Instead, we developed a routine that worked. I outlined each chapter as she got to it, moved relevant material from her transcripts into position, and provided direction on what to flesh out. Before she would start writing, we'd review what needed to be done and discuss how best to accomplish the tasks. She called if she hit a roadblock. Otherwise, we chatted once a week. I played "The Strict Task-Mistress" when I had to, and offered an ear, sympathy, feedback, and encouragement otherwise. Picture a pseudo-therapist with a cheerleader's pom-pom in one hand and a riding crop in the other and you get the idea. The result? The pages quickly mounted, and she could no longer procrastinate through revision because I edited the chapters as quickly as she churned them out.
I was really starting to enjoy this writing coach business, which was just as well since I had another client. Linda recommended me to a fellow agent with a writer who had proven incapable of getting a handle on the memoir she was penning. The writing was splendid, the agent explained, but without an outline-- which the author just couldn't produce-- she couldn't take it to market.
The pages that Ida Alamuddin had composed were indeed powerful and poignant. Though the language did need minor sharpening and tightening, I felt that I was in the presence of a master. The master, however, had no idea how the splendid chapters she had crafted fit together, or of her memoir's overall focus. Yes, it revolved around her life. But that was the problem. Too much had happened, and in the process of trying to sift through those events and weave in the historical and thematic strands of her book, she had gotten lost. Most of us know the experience of feeling so close to our material that we can no longer clearly see where we're going. Having lived the trauma she was writing about, Ida was doubly blinded, as well as consumed by a sense of aloneness in the face of a task that threatened to consume her.
Before we could even discuss the outline, Ida needed to get me up to speed about the events not covered in the medley of chapters she'd written, as well as the history and culture of Lebanon, the setting for her memoir. The easiest way for her to do that was to write to me. Her letters, some up to ten and twenty pages long, not only gave me the background I needed, they provided background that the book needed as well. Whole chunks were now just waiting to be woven into past and future pages.
As soon as I had the necessary background, we met to discuss the parts of Ida's life about which she had not yet written. Five hours, pages of handwritten notes, many tears and two glasses of wine later, we had identified all the pieces and shared at least one epiphany. I can't vouch for this scientifically, but from experience I know that you reach into different parts of your brain when you write than when you talk. Brainstorming is just that: you storm your brain, often from unexpected directions. As a result, you get to places that you can't reach by writing alone.
Early the next morning I drafted a rough outline, which we reviewed together over the phone, combining some chapters, adding others. After two hours, we had a framework that made us proud. That evening, Ida sent me an e-mail. "Thank you, Linden. You gave me your all… Despite all of the shit and violence and misfortune in my life-- the ongoing pain and the crap-- I am the luckiest person, the luckiest person in the world to be working on my book with someone like you… Thank you, my friend, for your energy and focus and understanding, and most of all your belief in me and my story."
And there, for me, lies the reason that I will cultivate my writing coach business which through word of mouth, advertising, and my website now extends to more than a dozen clients. Instead of writing for and with non-writers who will never understand and appreciate what it takes to produce a book, I can offer aid and support to writers in the midst of the creative stew. I will help prep and stir and season and strain, and once it is done, we will feast together. And when I finally turn to my own writing, I will remember that I, too, am not alone.
Linden Gross is a best-selling book author and editor, as well as a national magazine journalist with over 20-years experience both on staff and freelancing. As a writing coach, she works with aspiring and veteran writers to help edit and shape their work for publication. For more information, please visit her site at www.lindengross.com/wordrx.html.
In 2006, Linden started Incubation Press, which specializes in print-on-demand publishing. Clients-- whether writers ordering 10 to 20 copies of their memoir, authors ordering dozens of review copies of their manuscript, or commercial enterprises ordering hundreds of copies of their promotional booklet-- receive their printed and bound trade paperbacks within days. All retain 100 percent of their rights and 100 percent control of this easy and economical publishing process. Watch for www.incubationpress.com coming soon.
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