Through one-on-one consultations, your writing coach—Julia Dauer, Jess Engebretson, or Michelle Niemann—engages with your ideas in a substantive yet generous way. We are sharp readers, and we don’t hesitate to ask you questions about your argument and to alert you to any possible critiques that we can anticipate. At the same time, we’re committed to creating a space where you can safely share messy, truly in-progress work while you’re in the thick of drafting and revising it.
Because you and your writing coach discuss your draft in detail, each hour-long writing consultation helps you develop a concrete plan for moving your project forward.
What makes us unique as writing coaches?
We provide kind, process-based support.
We understand academic writing as an iterative process that makes both intellectual and emotional demands on writers. Our coaching combines pragmatism and optimism in order to meet individual writers where they are.
Sometimes a coach’s role is to encourage a writer to re-engage with their own passion for a project, rethink its structure, or revise it substantially. At other times, our role is to encourage a writer to overcome perfectionism and let their manuscript move on to the next stage.
We respond to your work-in-progress in an intellectually rigorous way.
We’re willing to be frank with writers and ask challenging questions. We aim to push your thinking by explaining our readerly perspectives honestly: your coach will tell you which claims they find compelling, which points they don’t follow, and what they find provocative and want to hear more about.
We’ve each earned a PhD in English and published our own scholarly work, so we’re familiar with the conventions of academic writing. However, our outside perspectives are often as useful as our knowledge. Your coach isn’t in your field or subfield; they don’t know much about your particular topic of study. In other words, your coach has no set position on debates in your discipline and no ego to protect. We can therefore ask strategic questions that help you reflect on your assumptions and best frame the issues at hand.
Your coach will read an article or chapter draft in advance of each consultation and get into the weeds with you about revision options. Engaging with the substance of your writing is essential because these conversations help you make the crucial big and small decisions that go into drafting and revising an academic monograph, journal article, or chapter.
These conversations help you think through the kinds of writing conundrums that are impossible to solve in abstract terms: the order of sections, the order of paragraphs, the movement of the argument, the kinds of evidence and rhetorical appeals that your intended readers will find most compelling, and so on. Focusing on drafts also gives us an evidence-based way to reflect on your writing process and develop strategies for changing any habits that may be holding you back.
What happens in consultations?
Nearly all writers find it useful to spend some time explaining their arguments to us during consultations. Beyond that there’s a lot of variety. Writers often use consultations to:
- develop and refine their arguments;
- more clearly articulate their interventions in their field;
- rethink structure at all levels (chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences);
- assess their current projects and prioritize;
- set goals and hold themselves accountable to deadlines;
- reflect on and experiment with their writing process;
- draft or revise during the consultation;
- record conversations with their coach and mine the transcript for their own clear statements of their arguments to incorporate into the draft;
- get an outside perspective that helps take their anxiety down a notch;
- decide how to revise in response to feedback.
Why do we encourage regular coaching consultations?
We each meet with clients on an ongoing basis, holding an hour-long, one-on-one coaching consultation every two or four weeks.
In our experience, meeting on a regular cadence gives writers consistent support through the trickiest parts of the writing process. Whether you’re developing a piece, triaging the projects you have on deck, or figuring out how to revise, your coaching consultation enables you to decide on a direction and take your next steps.
We have found that writers who have regular consultations move forward more quickly than those who schedule a consultation once they’ve reached a drafting milestone. Waiting to meet with your coach until you’re finished with a draft of, say, chapter 3 deprives you of coaching when you need it most—and when it helps most. When you’re immersed in a messy draft of chapter 3, you’ll use a coaching consultation to hash out what you’re really trying to say and tackle the structural and rhetorical questions that are making the chapter challenging to finish.
We are open to stand-alone or occasional consultations, but they’re most useful for writers who want to have just one or two consultations about a short project.
The best way to explore working with a coach on an ongoing basis is to schedule a free initial consultation. You and your coach will talk about your project, any external pressures you’re facing (such as a tenure clock), and your concerns about the writing process—and you’ll figure out if you’re a good fit.
A Note for Graduate Students
If you’re pursuing your PhD or master’s degree, you may have access to writing support for free. Many universities have writing centers that offer graduate students one-on-one appointments with a peer writing consultant. We also encourage graduate students (and all academic writers!) to set up a regular writing group with peers inside or outside of your department or institution.
Rates and Policies
Our rate is $265 for each writing consultation. This rate includes the one-hour consultation as well as your coach’s reading of your draft in advance.
We invoice monthly after consultations are held, and we are happy to invoice your institution. We are committed to ethical coaching; we are not ghostwriters. We keep your work in progress and our work together confidential, and we only add projects to our portfolio with the writer’s express permission.
As writing coaches, we will engage with your ideas with curiosity, rigor, and kindness. Think of it as very low-stakes peer review from a generous generalist.