Believing that literacy is an
amazing gift, knowing that people have shed blood and tears for it, I take reading
seriously. I also take writing very
seriously. So you have to know that when
a friend approached me about acting as his book coach, I was enthused and took
the request seriously. What I should have done was to take a paraphrased
cue from Forest Gump: “Mama says, ‘reading
is what writers do.’” Suffice it to say,
my friend is not a reader.
Hindsight being what it is, I
suppose that I should have gone into the project realizing that someone who
does not read fiction simply won’t have an automatic “feel” for it. I probably should have asked to see an
outline or proposal, but I love my friends , so I jumped in with both feet,
from word one.
On the surface, the job of a book
coach is pretty straightforward:
·
Walk
the author through the step-by-step process of writing, publishing, and
promoting their book
·
Explain
the structure of a book and how the parts fit together
·
Help
organize ideas, research, main points, and written material
·
Help
create a writing plan, set realistic deadlines, and create a schedule for
meeting them
·
Work
with the author to find their own unique voice
·
Help
develop the book from the original idea through the outline, rough drafts, and
revisions to polished manuscript
·
Provide
feedback and advice on flow, grammar, substance, and writing style
·
Point
out inconsistencies, word repetition, weak vocabulary, and lack of clarity
Knowing
what the job entailed, I knew that I could handle it. To his credit, my friend is not lazy and didn’t
expect me to write the book for him. What
I didn’t plan on was that I would have to begin by tutoring him in grammar, sentence
structure, punctuation, and spelling.
What I wasn’t prepared for was that he would grow more than a little
angry with me for doing EXACTLY what he asked me to do. That left me with some questions like:
·
How
do you become annoyed with someone who mentors you on the use of YOUR native
language?
·
How
can you stay irritated by someone who insists that you use quotation marks in a
novel?
·
How
does anyone fume over the need for paragraphs?
·
What
kind of novel has only one endless chapter?
Okay,
so you probably already know how this ends… My friend is convinced that he has developed a
new 400-page art form, and that book coaching and traditional novel forms are
over-rated. He also now thinks that I am
an anal-retentive book Nazi and I am not going to tell him any different. For my part, I am hoping that he will figure
out another way to tell his story.
Probably
as a video.
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