Hi writers,
After a couple weeks of rest-and-recharge time in September, I’m excited to start up the fall session of my coaching program—and to return to writing to you here!
One of the things I’m enjoying doing on Substack is distilling into clear terms what Fresh Ink Coaching is all about. Is there a Fresh Ink Method? A Fresh Ink Theory?
In my first year or two of coaching, I focused primarily on teaching craft and on passing down the insights I’d learned from my own writing teachers.
However, as my coaching practice evolved, I noticed that writers were consistently grappling with questions that had very little to do with craft – questions like:
How can I stop being so distracted and make writing a priority?
How do I become less self-critical so that I don’t give up on my first draft?
What will help me overcome these feelings of imposter syndrome?
These were all difficult questions—and I hadn’t learned the answers to them in grad school. It was only through the (long and painful) process of writing my first novel that I’d gained some important insights into how to work with the emotional challenges of writing.
As a coach, I realized that one of the most important things I could do with clients was share my firsthand experience as a writer. By talking frankly about my writing failures and why they’d happened, I was able to illustrate for writers how important it was to shift into new mindsets and processes that really supported their creativity.
Now, one of the first things I share with my coaching clients is the writing model that I used to use, back when I was a fresh MFA grad, and why this model consistently thwarted my writing progress.
This was a process loop I was caught in for a long time, and it was only through delving into research around brain science, philosophical mindset work, and somatic experiencing that I started to understand how and why it needed to change.
These days, this is the process I use—and that I encourage my clients to adopt.
Want to learn more about the “Fresh Ink Way”? Drop your questions in the Comments below, and I’ll answer them in a post coming up later this month!
-Jaime