The best in the world at almost everything have coaches and mentors. For sure bad advice and bad coaching is bad, but “all coaching is worthless” is equally bad advice. Dunno why you’re pushing this so hard?
-
-
Replying to @ddn
I didn’t say all coaching. Sports coaching is great. Writing? Land of snake-oil.
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @zeynep
It seems that way because you’re not familiar with all the snake oil in sports and athletics. It’s the same thing. Writing coaching can be invaluable, as much it can be worthless.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @ddn
I am! Lifelong exerciser. One of my most read articles is about snake oil in the fitness industry!
It’s the one I make an exception for, because good sports coaching is at least possible! I see a lot of rigid, useless writing advice and I was responding to another round of it.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @zeynep
looks like a great piece at a glance. Be that as it may, I think good writing coaching is no different than good coaching in anything else. It’s hard to find, and you’ll pay for it. The rest is rigid, useless, and worthless - as you say.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @ddn
What I responded to was rigid instructions/guidelines being discussed. So many words for day, only that many words for day, not more, not less, etc.
That's straight up snake-oil—charitable interpretation is someone passing off their own rigidities/issues as writing advice.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
As for writing coaching: after years of being embedded in communities of people who *do* write a lot (and no experience writing before) what I saw was that successfull writers wildly differ. But they all write/rewrite/edit/rewrite a lot. I think hiring editors is a good idea.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @zeynep
I definitely agree with you on all those points. And those are parallel with all coaching I’ve experienced. Plenty of fitness coaches pass off their rigid dogma as advice. Maybe I over-read but it seemed like you were throwing all writing coaching out with the bath water.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @ddn
Honestly, I can’t really imagine paid coaching for writing being useful beyond fairly basic stuff—let alone rigid guidelines. But maybe there are some hidden gems that no something beyond the many many many writing help books that all say the same thing? Skeptical but okay.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
OTOH if I ever fail or burn out of this writing/academic career, my back up plan is to open a gym+coaching center for women who like/want exercise for health or for fun—and compete only with themselves. The words “tone” and “shred” will be banned, along with pink dumbells.
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
Weights, but in proportional increments, not 10-15-20... 60-65...
Most sets of weights people use (rather than one of each pair, everyone waiting for that one pair of 20 lbs while 60, 65, and 70 needlessly exist and gather dust). Weights jump ropes. Few isolation machines.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.