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@edmund-lloyd-fletcher
@taylorclogston
@deeprun

I wonder if we might think of this in the context of actually coaching  someone… what would we tell them? As in, we’re there to help them… not just give advice from the side (that’s often a good and necessary thing, but I’d like to look at it from a different perspective, if only slightly).

There are two things that, when they meet in the right proportions, I think make up great coaching in many fields, especially in the realm of letting the artist learn through experience that then builds conversation to talk things out.

-An artist needs to know that he (or she) is free to work, learn, and make mistakes. That it’s a beautiful thing, and maybe the greatest part of learning is the mistakes themselves, that the coach will be there to help through that. An artist often needs the coach to help lift them up as they work, bring encouragement.

-Secondly, an artist needs to be pushed by the coach to reach goals or standards. This means the coach will probably help make sure the artist has what he needs to do this, to one degree or another… but also “requires” (in the coaching kind of way) the artist to push for it, and absorb the mistakes but push through.

Both of these are forms of encouragement, and the do overlap, and some artists need a lot more of one than the other at certain times of need.

In this context… when preparing something for an artist to pick up and look at, to figure out how to use, they want something they can trust. Something that offers hope in the short term and the long term, and probably does have at least some structure for him or her to work in. There is always a level of objectivity.

As Talyor Clogston said, it’s important to know the rules before you can break them… and I agree with this in a lot of ways, but it’s not actually how I learned. And it’s not how a lot of artists learned… and I think the writers that learn in our “unorthodox” way tend to develop voice in a more prominent manner, because they aren’t working in that structure. They pull from an intuitive place of understanding and storytelling that formulates how their writing voice flows. And it’s been my experience that orthodox training tends toward artists have less defined “voices” in distinction, where our unorthodoxly trained artists thrive in the idea of voice (even if they’re not confident in it).

If I were coaching someone… I might first off let them know that if they don’t have the voice they’re looking for, I have no doubt they’ll find it. I’d also show them where the voice is and comes through in their writing, and maybe point them to where they can develop voice. Most authors that I hear complain about their writing voice have a lot more of it than they realize… in an individual way. And though voice is subjective to the author, it is comprised of understandable and concrete ideas.

And, I’ll leave it at that for now. My brain goes on long explorations of such ideas… and I’d better hold it back for now. Please pick apart what I’ve said. Or just respond as you see fit. I’m here to talk through the ideas more. But, when I think through things like this… especially when thinking about coaching or helping… I try to figure out what is objective and what is subjective. And I think in this case, the tools are objective but can be subjectively applied… which is something that can be taught. One top of that, there are voices that hold more artistic strength than others.

*shuts his mouth to see what others have to say*
*also takes out note pad and pen*