You’re looking at your draft, ready to edit. Recognise any of these thoughts? I just want to sound more intelligent. I need to polish this. It sounds too simple. If you are hearing these voices, you’re not alone – they’re familiar to many writers. The trouble is, they’re often leading you astray. Attempts to sound […]
jo@thewritecoach.nz
I’m Sick of the Election Campaign and it hasn’t really Started.
How to Survive Election Year Without Chucking Something at your Telly If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of political speeches, you’re not alone. These Election Bingo cards are a fun, practical way to analyse political language, identify techniques, and understand how meaning is shaped — making them perfect for everyday viewers and for NCEA […]
Making Sense of Feedback
“I’ve got some feedback, but I can’t make head or tail of it. What should I do?” I hear from a lot of intelligent, capable people who have this frustration. They’re stuck, because they can’t translate the feedback they’ve received into useful actions. They turn to me, expecting to hear how they’ve gone wrong, and […]
The Pre-Planning Stage of Writing: How Ideas Form Before the Page
From fragments and impressions to clear, confident writing You’re facing up to a piece of writing – any piece – but your overwhelming thought is “I don’t know what I want to say yet.” You probably do, but it’s still tucked away in the recesses of your brain, between shopping lists and that work email […]
Inside The Write Coach: What 2025 Taught Me About Clarity, Thinking, and Writing
2025 has been a year where I’ve learned just as much from my clients as they’ve learned from me. I’ve worked with academic writers, business owners, creative writers, memoirists, and one-off speech writers. I’ve supported people from nine to seventy-nine, planners and panickers, writers with 80-word tasks and writers with 80,000-word theses. And no matter […]
How Collaboration Helped Me Build my Brand
When I first started The Write Coach, I thought having a logo and a website meant I had a brand. I liked my logo, thought hard about the words on my website – and I loved having a business card. Job done, right? Except it wasn’t. Everything was fine, but it just lacked impact (to […]
AI as a Tool, Not a Shortcut: Protect Your Work, Protect Your Reputation
I’m feel like I’m in a perpetual conversation with an annoying friend who’s always offering unsolicited advice. Every time I open a new document or type something into a search engine, there they are, saying, ‘Have you thought about this? I can help, you know.” Maybe I don’t want your help! Maybe I can do […]
Memoir Writing: Truth, Ownership, and the Ethics of Telling Your Story
What happens when a bestselling memoir turns out not to be entirely true? The storm surrounding The Salt Path by Raynor Winn has highlighted a central problem in memoir writing: what counts as the truth—and who gets to tell it? The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn, is a hugely successful book (and now film) about […]
Bad Writing – for Real
Let’s talk about bad writing — the kind that makes you laugh, cringe, roll your eyes, or is the gateway to better things. Take birthday cards, for example. Does anyone else deliberately seek out the cheesiest message? I mean the ones with groan-worthy puns, strained rhymes, and rhythm that just… doesn’t. I love those! There’s […]
What If Writing Was Your Superpower?
There’s something magical about writing. Not just useful, not just necessary—but joyful. I see it all the time in my workshops: that moment when what’s on the page matches what was in your head – a sentence, a detail, a simile that just works! Writing can be hard work, for sure. But it can […]