Whether you’re a first-time writer or an experienced writer, working in fiction or nonfiction, a writing coach can help you move your writing project ahead while increasing your creative energy.

Are you working on a journal, a weblog, a life story or memoir, a family reminiscence, a biography or autobiography?

Are you writing magazine or newspaper articles, putting out a newsletter, trying to get a manuscript published, or considering self-publishing?

Are you developing web site content or other material for e-publishing or print-on-demand?

Whatever your writing project, you can spend more time working on its creative side if an experienced writing coach is helping you with the nuts-and-bolts of the writing side.

You will also spend more time being creative if you can spend less time on other mechanics of the writing process, such as finding and maintaining your market or audience focus. A writing coach can help get your material pointed in the right direction, then gently nudge you to stay on course.

Besides one-to-one writing help, and keeping you focused, a writing coach can help you with a range of content development and copy editing skills, such as:

• identifying an audience; establishing a desired theme, tone, style and marketing focus; researching and organizing material; creating an outline

• challenging cloudy explanations, faulty logic, vague assumptions, errors of fact, inconsistent points of view, sloppy examples and analogies

• checking for proper word usage and consistent style; eliminating wordiness and jargon; improving readability by smoothing out sentence and paragraph transitions; making technical passages and complex concepts accessible to the reader

• finding and plugging gaps in content; ensuring material stays addressed to audience, remains true to outline and adheres to desired theme, tone, style and marketing focus

• suggesting ways to use graphics, bullet lists, sidebars and graphics to improve flow and readability; selecting, creating, and placing figures and tables

• editing for typographical and mechanical errors, grammar, spelling, and punctuation  

Writer's block buster. If you’ve been distracted or lost your motivation, if you're encountering obstacles or think your writing project is at a dead-end, a writing coach can get you moving again.

Take a fresh look. Even professional writers get too close to their work. If you’re caught in an endless cycle of changes and rewrites, if you’ve drifted and can’t get back to what you originally wanted to say, a writing coach can help restore your perspective.