She Says She Doesn’t Need a Coach Yet

For the woman asking, “When should I hire a book coach?”

I see a lot of women sitting on the sidelines, waiting to get into the game. Most of the time, when they’re being honest, they’re afraid to reach out because they don’t have a draft yet, or they’re still thinking about what the book is about, and what they might say. “I’m not sure what the book is about. I don’t know the theme.”

They think coaching is for later, for when they have it figured out. For the version of them who has already sorted the material and just needs help polishing it.

What they’re actually describing is embarrassment, and it has nothing to do with the story itself. It’s about not knowing what to do with it yet. Somewhere along the way they decided that a woman who’s spent thirty years running a company, raising a family, surviving the thing she’s now trying to write about, should already know what her own book is. And if she doesn’t, she assumes the gap is in her, not in the process.

“I haven’t spent enough sorting the thoughts for myself yet for a session to actually go anywhere.”

That’s the real sentence beneath “I’m not ready yet.”

When I walk people through the Blueprint process, we do it in three sessions, with some homework. It’s built to give you clarity moving forward, not to require you to already know the answer.

Book coaching isn’t only for the woman who’s already figured out what she’s doing. The whole reason to start with a coach is that you haven’t sorted it yourself, and you’re not going to by staring at journals, half-drafts, and a folder of notes labeled “misc.”

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Some women also think what they need first is a manuscript. That’s a different process, with its own path.

But what actually happens in a first blueprint session has nothing to do with pages already written. We start with homework I give you, based on Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Book.

We discuss your story, what’s driving the book internally, and what you’re actually trying to work out for yourself. Then we talk about who you’re writing it for. Not in the abstract, but as an actual person, someone with a real reason to pick this book up.

The blueprint is a useful reference throughout the process, not just at the beginning, because you can test your revisions against those early assumptions.

I worked with a woman recently who has an incredible book, one I can already picture in the marketplace. She had all the material. What she couldn’t see was how the pieces fit together in a way that wasn’t linear. From outside the material, I could see it: move the opening back and forth between her primary throughline and a supporting actor running underneath. She loved it. She’d been too close to find it herself.

I know the feeling from the inside, too. When I sent my own memoir to my developmental editor, she told me the opening needed to change. She didn’t tell me which scene to use instead. I sat with that for about a week, until I woke up early one morning and knew exactly what it was. I moved a few pieces around, rewrote some transitions to make sure it held together, and it did. That’s the opening chapter you can read on my website now.

None of that requires a draft, and none of it requires you to already know the perfect theme or a highly-refined persona of your ideal reader. That’s what we discuss and test during the sessions, for what feels true and honest. Because I’m standing outside your story, I can help you take it from your thoughts to something that can change an earlier version of you.

If you’ve been saying, “I don’t need a coach yet,” or “I haven’t done the work yet,” I’d love to know. Reply and tell me, or forward this to the woman who needs to hear it isn’t true.

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This originally posted on Substack.