Episode Thirty-Six: Why I’m Shifting from Editing to Coaching (and writers should too)
Don’t get me wrong, developmental editing can be insanely valuable for writers, but it’s not the best option for all writers. In fact, I would argue that it’s not the best option for anyone working on their first book.
I’m seeing more and more writers embrace coaching, but there are still plenty of people out there who think editing is their best option for getting feedback on a novel. In this episode, I’m going to take you behind the scenes of my business to share why I shifted from editing to coaching and the value that this change has for writers.
I’ll also clarify which writers are best served by edits and which should stick to coaching for now.
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Please note: This transcript was automatically generated and only lightly edited.
Olivia (00:00)
All around the writing world, developmental editors are suddenly turning into book coaches, and I'm one of them. Is this just a trend, a way to make more money, or something else entirely? I am usually the one lagging behind trends, not jumping on them when they start, but I am currently part of the wave of developmental editors who are becoming more focused on coaching writers instead of just editing manuscripts.
And today I want to take you behind the scenes and talk about why this shift is actually a good thing for writers and how coaching can benefit you, especially if you are a newer writer. So stay tuned for all the nosy behind-the-scenes details of why I shifted my business from just editing to now include coaching.
Welcome to episode 36 of the Better Writer Podcast. I am so excited that you are here to come behind the scenes with me and talk about why I shifted my business from editing to coaching. And to start, we need to go all the way back to before I was actually an editor. Once upon a time, I was a high school English teacher. And in my fourth year of teaching, two things happened. Number one, it was COVID. 2020. I was a fourth year teacher. It was really sad because I was on top of the world. It was the year that I finally felt like I knew what I was doing. and then the whole world shut down, including my school and I was teaching online. And that is what really pushed me to start taking my fiction seriously for the first time. Because I had more time. I was at home. I could log off of a Zoom class and I didn't have 10 kids asking me when are you gonna grade the homework I turned in late or you know, something like that.
And so I started really seriously studying fiction. And I also moved from Connecticut to Rhode Island. Don't recommend in the middle of a pandemic, but it is what it is. And I got a new job. I started teaching at a school that gave me absolute curriculum flexibility. I could do whatever I wanted in the classroom, especially because we were all teaching online. I had a teaching partner who was super busy with really young kids. So I did all of the planning for our grade level. She was down with whatever I planned.
And so I had a lot of freedom and I decided to start bringing in elements of creative writing into my classes. I actually taught a creative writing elective. It was so much fun. And at the same time, I was going all in on writing fiction. And I mean, we had 30 minute breaks between classes because it was the pandemic. So I was writing every single second of them. And in that time, I realized that what I was learning about the craft of writing fiction professionally was the complete opposite of what I had always been taught about writing as a teacher, as a student. Everything that I had learned growing up that I was now bringing into my own classroom had nothing to do with what people were actually doing to write fiction as adults who wanted to get published and be successful. And I realized that what people do in writing classes as adults is unlearn all of the things they were taught about writing in high school.
You unlearn you know this idea that writing is supposed to be solo, you unlearn this idea that revision consists of just looking for typos. You unlearn this idea that, you know, there is one generic imaginary audience that we are writing to, and instead you start focusing on a target audience that is actually going to read your stuff. Everything that we do to write publishable fiction does not happen in classrooms. And so when we came back to school, masks on and everything I completely revamped the way that I taught writing and it worked. We started doing writing workshops. We would have writing projects that were weeks long instead of just, you know, we do this for two days and you turn it in and never look at it again. And the biggest change that I made is that I started giving in progress feedback.
Every day that we were working on a writing project was a writing workshop. I was running around the classroom snatching kids' Chromebooks and giving them feedback, or I was, you know, at my little podium with every student's Google Doc open in a separate tab on my computer. And I was like electronically circulating through every kid's document all the time. And I was leaving comments, I was conferencing with them, I was asking them questions every single day. And when I look back, I think that was the biggest game changer.
Because I was having conversations with students about their intentions, their goals. I was helping them brainstorm and troubleshoot and figure out how to make those goals come to life on the page. And I've talked before about my experiment with, you know, giving students options to, you know, either work as a pantser a plotter. You can go back to those episodes where I talk about my my grand experiment and giving kids the flexibility to choose different deadlines. and I think that part of it, letting kids work in the way that works best for them, definitely played a role in the success of this project.
But I think that conferencing element, checking in with them all the time, giving a temporary in-progress grade to say, this is how you would be scored if you turned this in today. Here's what we need to do to get to you know the next letter grade. Obviously with adult writers, I don't grade you that way. But all of those things worked together to help my students grow as writers. Then after a few years, I, you know, realized that I wanted to be working with writers full-time. I did not want to be in the classroom anymore. And that is when I started editing. I had absolutely fallen in love with teaching writing. And at that time I saw developmental editing as the best way to work with writers as the way to bring my passion into my full-time job. And I love editing.
Editing is great. I have had clients go on to be amazingly successful. They have gotten book deals. They have gotten big book deals, book sell at auctions. I have had clients who self-publish who have sold thousands of copies of their books, which is incredible. And at the same time, that success was not necessarily universal. And I think part of that is just that publishing is subjective. It is not easy. There is an element of timing or luck or whatever. But I think the real differentiator is that some of my clients were coming to me with more experience as writers. They were able to take that feedback and fully implement it. They knew how to use the tools of fiction. And that meant that they could take my feedback and run with it and take that book from, you know, 80% of the way there to 110% of the way there.
But for someone who is starting out where their book is maybe only 25% of the way there or 10% or like is barely even drafted, it's a much bigger jump to make. And if you have not taken writing classes, if you don't have a ton of experience as a writer, it is going to be much, much harder to take an edit and then transform that into a plan for actually revising your story from beginning to end in a way that is going to be successful. And as I started working with writers, I started to notice this trend where I offer a package deal where you can get a developmental edit and then a follow-up manuscript evaluation. Or sometimes we reverse it and I do the manuscript evaluation first and then the developmental edit. And those packages are great, it's amazing. But I started to notice that people were coming back to me for that round two with a manuscript that hadn't really changed that much. And at first I started questioning myself, thinking, you know, are they just choosing not to follow my feedback? Was it bad feedback? Did I do the wrong thing? Did I not explain myself?
And what I realized is that the problem wasn't necessarily with my feedback. It was that the writer didn't necessarily know how to implement it. They wanted to implement it. They agreed with me. They wanted to make changes in their story. They just didn't quite know how. And I think that is a much more common problem with editing than people really talk about that. You need to know how to write before an edit is really going to be helpful. You have to have a basic understanding of how fiction works because there's only so much we can do with an edit.
An edit gives you feedback on a snapshot of your story. You are getting feedback on a moment of your writing process because we are only looking at that one draft in isolation. And even though I offer follow-up calls, even though I do revision evaluations, after the edit, you're pretty much on your own to actually figure out how to implement all of that feedback. And not everyone has the skill to do that. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If that's you, it's normal. Writing fiction is not easy. It is a skill that we have to learn. And if you haven't yet learned it, an edit is only going to do so much for you. And you might be able to do that learning as you are applying the feedback. You might be able to figure it out on your own, but there's also a chance that you are going to miss opportunities to make your story better because you don't fully understand the feedback or don't fully know how to implement the feedback or something like that. Again, totally normal.
You have to learn how to write. And an edit isn't always the best way to do that. And I'm even saying this as I used to call myself an educator editor because I love teaching people and I was trying to teach through the comments on the manuscript or trying to teach through the editorial letter. And some of my editorial letters ended up way too long for that reason. And I think that what I have learned is that an edit just is not the proper vehicle for really learning how to write.
And if you are someone who is just starting out, if you've never written a book before, if you have never taken a writing class before, and yet you know you've plowed your way through a draft and managed to get to the end, that is incredible. You're probably not ready for an edit. And that is a boundary that I definitely want to hold more in the future. That I, you know, I have already started to say that developmental editing is not right for a first draft. I think I have sometimes bent the rules if someone is really passionate about getting an edit from me. And I really need to just firmly say, you have to have done at least one round of revision before I will consider you as a developmental edit client. And I think even more than that, I don't even think a manuscript evaluation is always the best choice if you do not have that experience. Because again, you aren't going to be overwhelmed by comments in that situation, but is the question of do you know how to implement this feedback? Do you know all of the techniques that you need in order to bring this feedback to life on the page?
And all of that to say, the shift to coaching allows me to close that gap. Because instead of just giving feedback on a snapshot of your manuscript at one point in time, I get to work with you on that draft from where you're starting all the way to where you want to go. And that is why I created my coaching program to teach you everything that you need to know to take feedback from me and actually use it, giving you everything you need to know to figure out parts of your story on your own as well as that when you get feedback from me, you are getting feedback on a stronger version of your story already. And then we can move it even further after that.
And that's what I do in my course, Reader Ready Revisions. You get the lessons from me that are already pre-recorded explaining the basics, the things that you need to know in order to bring your story to life on the page. Then you get feedback from me on your exact story. So we can work together, we can brainstorm together, we can have a conversation about what is going to work for your book. And then you can take that along with the lessons, along with the basics, and put it to work on the page. And that has been so magical and I think so helpful. And you know, I will be honest, I am not in people's Google Docs 24/7. I am not, you know, running around the classroom anymore, you know, with adult writers because everything is online. It's asynchronous.
But I do get to capture that quality of workshopping with you on your book over time. The program is 16 weeks. So we spend four months together talking about your book all the time, getting into all of the details, figuring out what is going to make your story work, starting from just what kind of story are you writing? Who is it for? Do we know where you're trying to go? Because you would not believe how many first-time writers aren't actually crystal clear on their genre or who their target audience is. And that is the thing that we need to figure out first to make sure you are on the right track.
We get to have conversations about that and figure that out together. And you get feedback on that work. You're not just getting feedback on your manuscript. You're getting feedback on do I have the right genre category? Do I know who I'm writing for? Do I know how to make sure that I hit all of the requirements of that genre? Then we move into actually analyzing your story. We start with the reverse outline. You get feedback on your reverse outlines. You have feedback from me before you rewrite a single word of your story. We are not just waiting until the whole draft is done.
And feels complete for me to come along and say, like, actually, you missed this critical thing, and now we have to rewrite everything from scratch. No, we figure that out in the reverse outline from the start. Then you start rewriting, and I am there during the course to conference with you. There are options for one-on-one calls. We have the group calls pretty much every week. And then I email you every week for a year. And that's actually my favorite part because I am not expecting anyone to fully rewrite their story in four months. Maybe, maybe you could, but I don't recommend it and it's definitely not necessary. But you don't need to rewrite it in four months because you are going to have access to me for an entire year.
I will email you every Monday and I answer every single response that I get with helpful advice. I will help you troubleshoot whatever comes up in your story for that year. Because I am walking alongside you. Again, you're not just getting feedback on one moment in time. You're not just getting one hour to follow up with me and then you know figuring out the rest on your own. You get me in your back pocket for a year plus four months of the actual course so that I can help you at every stage in the process. And the more I think about why this transition is helping writers, why coaching is becoming a trend, it's because I think we've all realized that writing is hard. Writing is hard and we need support.
We don't just need support at one moment in time through an edit. We need support throughout, especially if you're just starting out, especially if you do not know what you're doing yet. And I think sometimes there is still this myth that writing is a natural talent that you will just figure it out, that it should just, you know, come into you through osmosis because you've read books before. And we can definitely learn from reading, you know, published books and things like that. But this is a skill and skills need to be taught. You need support. You need coaching. And I really love getting back into that feeling of leaning across a student's desk, looking at that tiny Chrome book screen and helping them figure out how to make their story better. Obviously that looks different when everything is online and virtual, but it really feels like I'm getting back in that energy that was so transformative for that group of students when I started teaching writing this way. And I miss that. And I didn't realize I was missing it until I started coaching again.
And I think the thing that I want to end with is again, editing is not bad. Editing can be great. And I think the real difference is about where you are as a writer and whether or not you have the skill to take feedback from an edit and apply it to the rest of your story. If you don't, and we gotta be honest with ourselves, there is nothing wrong if you don't have that skill yet, because no one's expecting you to have mastered writing if you've never written. It's not a bad thing to need support. And I think something that I really want to encourage people is to not just think that an edit is the only thing, that you must have an edit because that's what people do. And you've probably seen writing groups that it's time for an editor. And it might be, but it might not be. And I think coaching is a great substitute for a developmental edit specifically. We are not talking about copy editing and proofreading. That is a whole separate conversation. But coaching is for people who need help to implement feedback in their manuscript. And you might not know that you need help,
Especially if you think that you've got it. But I would say if you are a first-time novelist and this is your very first book, if you have not taken writing classes, if you have never workshopped your work before, if you have never taken feedback and applied it in this way, start with coaching. Start with something that's going to offer ongoing support, ongoing feedback, multiple touch points to make sure that you are actually implementing it correctly. And even better when that comes with some education on what you're even supposed to be doing, because quite honestly, my friends.
If you have just written the first draft of your first book without any classes, any help whatsoever, it is probably unreadable. I'm so sorry to tell you that it's probably unreadable. And it might be readable, but it's probably not the best version of that story. And again, that is normal. You didn't do anything wrong. You just don't know how to write yet, because this is not something you were taught in school. Yes, you learned how to spell and write words in school. You did not learn how to write fiction. unless maybe you were in my classroom for like two years when I was, you know, still teaching and teaching this way, but or maybe you had a teacher who was similar to me and got to do whatever they wanted and chose to teach fiction, but most likely you did not learn how to write fiction successfully in your school. And that's normal. That is the norm. That's the baseline that we're starting with. Then we learn, we grow, we figure it out. And you can either figure it out on your own through trial and error, which is gonna take you a lot of time and be super frustrating, or you can get help. And then I would say if you are someone who is experienced, you know how to write fiction, an edit is great.
Do that. If it's working for you, stick with it. But if you have gotten an edit and realized that you didn't actually really change your book for the better, it might be because that's just not what you needed. You needed ongoing support and education, not feedback on a snapshot of your story. All right. That is why I have shifted my business from editing to coaching. I think it is better for writers. there is also the side of it that because I'm now doing a group coaching program, I can also help more people at one time. It makes it a little bit more financially sustainable for me. It makes my schedule a little bit more sustainable.
So I didn't really get into that. But there is kind of the selfish side as well. But I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was genuinely helpful. I created this business to help writers. I have been helping writers from day one when I started this business, and that is what I will continue to do. but now I get to do it in a way that is honestly a little bit more fun for me or a lot more fun, honestly. I love the coaching aspect. I love working with people over time. I think that's one of the things I really miss from teaching.
It also feels more sustainable, which means I get to keep doing this work and I get to keep offering support to writers because this is my full-time job. So I do need to make money at it to in order for it to be sustainable. So it is a really nice balance. It helps my life. I think it is much more helpful for writers, especially those beginners. And I will say my editing services are not going anywhere, especially if you are a returning client and an experienced writer and you want to work with me as an editor, I still offer it. It's not going away, but I am definitely going to be more consciously shifting people toward reader-ready revisions and toward coaching, if I think that's the best fit. And I have done that before, but I think I'm going to really double down on that as well, especially for people who are newer and just starting out, because you need that ongoing support. And I will also say that generally speaking, if you are looking at a developmental edit specifically,
Every package I offer for reader-ready revisions is going to be cheaper than a developmental edit, unless your manuscript is super, super short. in which case you're probably not coming to me because I am your epic girl. I love working with long books. So this is not, you know, I don't want you to to listen to this episode and think that I am just trying to make more money off of writers with less work, because that is not the case. It is cheaper than editing, at least for developmental editing. A manuscript evaluation, it definitely depends on your word count and what you're looking at, but it is a way that I'm able to offer way more value to writers over time in a way that also is more sustainable for me, both financially and personally, but at a lower price point for you. So it really checks every box in that I get to help more people. I get to make my services a little bit more accessible. Definitely not cheap, just being honest there, but definitely more accessible than a developmental edit, which can be usually over $2,000 is the minimum that we're looking at depending on your word count. So reader ready revisions starts at 996. Still definitely not cheap, but cheaper. So again, this is a win-win. Now I am rambling. Sorry, I have a tendency to do that.
But the bottom line is that coaching is a great option if you are someone who's just starting out, someone who needs that writing education and the ongoing support to make sure that you actually implement everything that you know you need to fix and everything that you don't know you need to fix in your manuscript over time. Editing still a great option if you are experienced, if you know how to use feedback and know how to make your story better once someone points out the things that you couldn't see, great. Stick with that. But for most people, most writers, especially those just starting out, coaching is the way to go. Doesn't have to be with me, but I do think that having that support over time is a game changer and something that I really want to see more writers embracing.
Because I think the default right now is still editing, but I'm hoping that will change as people see the value of getting support for a longer period of time, support that meaningfully gets them to that goal of finishing their book. All right. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If this episode resonated with you at all, or if you have a comment, something you want to share, please message me.
I'm on Instagram at Olivia Helps Writers. Slide right into my DMs. Let me know what you're thinking. Let me know your questions, your comments, Whatever it is, please reach out. I would love to hear from you. And of course, if this episode helped you, please think about sharing it with a friend who needs it too. All right. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing. Keep getting better. One word at a time. See ya!
