How to write your memoir: This isn’t therapy, it’s bespoke coaching with therapeutic depth

You’re deeply invested in your craft. You write every day, you read copiously, you take the best writing courses, you have a strong peer network who offer critique of your drafts.

You might eventually hire a writing coach to suggest line edits.

Then you’ll look for an agent.  

But there’s something else that you probably haven’t thought about yet…

…An investment which is effective and purposeful, that will help you 1/ write your memoir while 2/ keeping you as safe and supported as possible…  

It is a bespoke package of coaching with therapeutic depth for memoirists.

Memoir writing is very challenging. I know, I have done it myself in short-form.

Why not put yourself in the right place professionally and personally to achieve your writing ambitions?

Many memoirists, and other writers, are writing alongside demanding careers and caring responsibilities - and everything else that life brings. As a coach with therapeutic depth, I can help you contain the challenge of reliving/writing lived experience. You can process your emotions about your writing before going to your day job.

I coach with rigour and respect.   

So, what does a bespoke package of coaching with therapeutic depth involve?

Let’s start by looking at the word ‘bespoke’.

You’re writing something deeply personal. It matters. My view is that you don’t want a coach who is working with multiple writers, struggling to keep in mind each person’s narrative. You want someone dedicated. A coach who will remember the intricacies of the work when you share it. A coach who will hold in mind why a particular scene is intensely difficult for you to write and edit.

I only take on a select number of memoirists to work with each month, so that I can fully immerse myself in whatever you are bringing to your coaching.

If you get up at 5am to write and you want to meet then, I’m there for you.

A ‘package’ might mean that perhaps we meet a few times when you’re starting out, or when you’re wanting to keep up the momentum, or when you’re almost there. It can be weekly, fortnightly, monthly. Whenever is right for you.  

While I can offer you the more standard coaching approach of identifying plans/goals and keeping accountability (please see my blog on ‘coaching – what to expect’), I suggest that what might be more useful to memoirists is a newer type of coaching, which is called ‘coaching with therapeutic depth’.

This form of coaching is ideally practiced by people who have trained as coaches as well as being counsellors/psychotherapists. I myself began as a counsellor/psychotherapist (MSc Person-Centred & Experiential Psychotherapy) and then took a postgraduate Advanced Diploma in Coaching. I’m registered with the EMCC as a Senior Practitioner Coach and I’m a member of the BACP. The coaching I offer isn’t coaching and therapy, it’s coaching that integrates the therapeutic, allowing for intense emotions to be processed as you progress towards your goals as a memoirist. Some sessions may be very intense, and others much less so.

As a coach with therapeutic depth, I work with writers, memoirists, and people who perform their work. I also write, and I was a lecturer for a long time, so exploration of craft is integral - although I wouldn’t be your writing coach, suggesting line edits. Neither am I your therapist. This is a new approach to getting you where you want to go, a combination of structure/focus and a space for emotions.    

What might a session look like?

It depends on what you’re bringing and what life’s like for you when we meet. Take some time to think what you will find most useful before you come in.

Here are a couple of possibilities for what might be live (I made up the content, as I don’t ever use the real material people share with me).

Challenge: So many ideas!

What do you want from coaching?

·         A sounding board at the start of your project. Your memoir could go in several different directions – your childhood in Shetland, your career in the prison service, your family of choice in London…

·         To play with possibilities.

·         To grapple with what’s just coming into your awareness – life impacting art.

·         To eventually decide where you’re going - and how it feels to be going there.

Challenge: You’ve got a block.

What do you want from coaching?

·         You can’t write about your late sister, even though she’s central to the memoir (currently running to 80,000 words).

·         Why has this suddenly started?  

·         You want to take care. But you have a deadline.

·         You want to resolve your ethical dilemma – do you cut/rewrite or not?  

What will be happening in our sessions?

·         You’ll hear yourself exploring - protected from the noise of everyday life.

·         Whether it’s too many ideas, a block, an ethical dilemma – or anything else, you’ll have space here for it.  

·         You’ll be witnessed – I’m a steady, committed presence. I’m interested in what you have to share and what you desire. I love reading and writing too.

·         I’ll ask questions, notice what you’ve said, sometimes challenge you (we’ll decide together how much challenge works for you); we’ll go at your pace.

·         I won’t be telling you what to do – you’re in control, this is your time, your memoir.

In a nutshell

Coaching with therapeutic depth offers you a protected space to explore your writing and the life that surrounds your writing - your emotional landscape, past, present and future. It honours you as a whole person - a dedicated writer and a human being who writes their life, sometimes writing through trauma, sometimes not. Coaching is an investment in writing your memoir as safely as you can. It’s not about teaching you or editing your work. I’ll be steady presence alongside you, working only with a few writers each month. You can be an emerging writer or an established writer, writing full-time or part-time. You can have anything from a blank page to 100,000 words or more. We meet online so you just have to be able to carve out 1-1.5 hours each time. You can switch between coaching with therapeutic depth and more standard coaching at any time. As with any coaching, you’re accountable for meeting your goals.   

Dr Deborah Lee, coach

EMCC-accredited Senior Practitioner coach. Welcoming cis-gender, heterosexual, LGBTQAI+, trans and non-binary clients. Working with awareness of relationship diversity. Seeking to offer a neuro-affirmative space. Always working on developing an intersectional lens.

Coaching with therapeutic depth and counselling/psychotherapy

I also offer coaching, and counselling/psychotherapy. They are described in separate blogs. There is also a blog on coaching with therapeutic depth which you will find useful for more information about what is involved in this type of coaching, as here I have focused on the specifics of being a memoirist.

Book your free discovery call/chemistry call

I hope this blog has given you an idea of what it might be like to do coaching with me. If you’d like to have a discovery/chemistry call, please email: hello@coachingwithdeb.co.uk and we can arrange a time to speak on the telephone for around 15 minutes.