Your Process, Your Way

COACHING

You are writing, or you want to. You need someone to bounce ideas off of, help you sort through your notes, get started, or keep going. Setting goals, and holding yourself accountable, are important to you. You need a cheerleader – don’t we all? – but you want someone who has a lot of experience working with writers at all stages of their careers, and who have been where you are.  If you have studied writing in a school or degree program, you know how working with a Mentor can support your creative process and help fuel your creative work; if you have never had any formal training or had the opportunity to work with a published writer and teacher, you are in for a treat.

Coaching is structured around regular meetings with your Mentor (monthly or biweekly, depending on duration). Set your own schedule and goals. Packages available for three months, six months, or one full year.  Your custom coaching might include, for example:

• Customized Plan #1: You need accountability more than anything.  You want to write forward, and keep going, at a steady pace, and you could use some guidance about how to move from one section to the next. After a consultation you might opt for 30-minute bimonthly video chats that will address accountability, and support you with progress check-ins and brainstorming chats.

• Customized Plan #2: You got this. Mostly. You know what your project is, and you have the skills to pull it off, but sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, or vice versa. After a consultation, you might opt monthly hour-long video chats that will include progress check-ins and creative troubleshooting/ brainstorming.

Standard packages range from $450 for 3 months up to $1500 for one year. Take a look at our Mentor pages and feel free to reach out to one of us to explore the next steps.

MANUSCRIPT CONSULTATION

TTWC Mentors are available to you for all levels of manuscript development: work in progress, completed drafts, final revisions before submission. Each manuscript consultation will offer the kind of feedback that will move your work closer to your desired goal. Your Mentor will talk with you prior to reading your work to help you to make the best choice for the kind of feedback that will most help you to take your work to the next level.  There are as many mix and match options for manuscript consultations as there are writers.  Here are two examples:

FULL MANUSCRIPT DEVELOPMENTAL EDIT

You did it. You wrote, and likely rewrote, and came to the words “The End.” Now what?

Well, first you breathe.  Do a little dance; cry it out in the shower. Then, you might be thinking you want a new set of eyes to help you find out if you got everything out of your brain and onto the page, and if it resonates with your reader the way it does in your brain.  The best readers are not your friends and family. You need someone who can support you, recognize what your goals are and help you acheive them.  Sometimes this means holding up a mirror so you can see what you have put on the page: both what is not yet there, and how to find the clues and opportunities you haven’t yet tapped.

We have done it ourselves. And we have taught writers how to shape their books, from overarching plot and themes to individual word choices. Whether you are almost there, or need to work out some major threads, talk to us and see what we can do.

A standard package for a full manuscript consultation will range from $2,000 to $3,000 (for prose—up to 300 pages); $1,200 to $1,500 (for poetry/hybrid forms—up to 80 pages.)

Talk with your mentor about non-standard manuscript lengths.

A HYBRID FORM

Maybe it’s just us, but we can imagine a mentorship that isn’t all talk or all writing. If you are working on a manuscript that is actively in process and you would like both some coaching and accountability, and an editorial response to your drafts so far, we can work with you.

Inspired by our decades of experience working with master’s students in a low residency creative writing program, we can also custom design a six-month plan for you that includes reading your work in progress and providing a written response, interlaced with coaching calls, via video or phone.  The timing of your submissions and the calls can be tailored to your schedule, but your hybrid coaching should be completed within six months for continuity and best results.

Cost range: $1,500 to $1,800 (each submission should fall within a standard range of 30 -50pg of prose; 20 to 30pg of poetry)

(This option is great for writers who are missing their time as a student and looking for a similar kind of support system.)