Becoming a Certified Book Coach
Nichelle Seely
Certified book coach
What celebration are we celebrating with you today?
I earned certification as a book coach!
How did you come to book coaching?
I came to book coaching via a long and winding path.
I've always loved reading and writing. My grandmother wrote and published three gothic novels, and my mother wrote mysteries and romances. This was back in the day of paper and snail mail. I saw my mother working on her novels, going to conferences with my grandmother, and finally landing an agent. I also learned early that writing success doesn't mean financial success. But I still wanted to do it!
In college, I got a degree in English, and looked fruitlessly for a job that wasn't teaching. After a few years in admin, I longed for a more creative career, and I went back to school and got a degree in architecture. I was a practicing architect for over twenty years, and although it was interesting, it wasn't actually very creative. All the time I was writing on the side, taking workshops and classes, slowly producing a novel.
In an attempt to level up my writing, I enrolled in an MFA program in creative writing. I quit halfway through. It wasn't teaching me what I wanted to learn, which was how to write a novel. And the workshop portion wasn't helpful. I saw how the process erased the individual writers' unique voices as they strove for the 'literary' style and tone.
During the pandemic, I wasn't able to work, but I finally wrote a suspense novel I considered to be good enough to publish, and I became an independent author. This has its own very steep learning curve. Over the next few years I was watching all the webinars and online content I could find about being an authorpreneur. During one panel, a woman mentioned she was a book coach. I was like, what's that? After some intensive searching on the internet, I stumbled across Author Accelerator. It just really resonated. After comparing it to other programs for editing and teaching, and realizing how much value it delivered, I took the plunge.
I started the fiction program in the spring of 2023. I completed the program in eight months and got my certification. Although this is my first foray into professional coaching, I have years and years of experience in workshops, conferences, critique groups, and the writing process. And that process was so slow! I truly wish I had hired a coach, or known it was even a thing. I would have saved so much time and money.
What was your experience in the Book Coach Certification program?
The value of the program is impossible to state. The craft it teaches is so focused and pointed. It took me years on the outside to learn what the the program distilled down in just a few lessons. And I still learned a lot about looking at writing from the outside, rather than the inside.
The practicums were challenging, but fun! It was so satisfying to see that, in addition to the passion, I actually had the skill to do this work and help other writers with their books as well as my own.
What is the most valuable piece of advice you’re taking away from the training?
I know it sounds trite, but not to give up, either on my passion or my dreams. It’s all achievable.
What did you do to celebrate this achievement?
I went out to dinner with my husband and had a margarita.
Tell us more about your book coaching plans. What are your next steps in your career?
y new business is called Plot and Pen. The domain is www.plotandpen.com with website coming soon. I'm still in the process of defining my business, but I intend to coach fiction and narrative memoir. I read all the genres except romance, and I write suspense and speculative fiction, so I feel comfortable coaching all fiction writers (except romance, which has a very specific readership). In memoir, my niche is more defined. I'm interested in travel, cultural, and stories of self-discovery. Less interested (and not qualified, to be honest) to coach stories of trauma and recovery.
