SERVICES

Bruce McAllister provides coaching and consulting services to both new and established writers. As a coach he helps writers get started writing, overcome any chronic or sudden writers blocks, and continue writing whether it is traditional journaling, creative journal writing, or writing toward one or more finished writing products (books, screenplays, short stories, articles, poetry). His first goal is to help the writer choose the kind of writing and project--by genre, craft and subject matter--truest to her or him since such writing will inevitably be the best written and the most publishable.

As a consultant, Bruce evaluates finished writing projects--novels, non-fiction books, screenplays, short stories, poems and articles--for their craft readiness to go out into the worlds of agents, book publishers, magazine editors, and production companies; and for their marketability in those worlds. He helps the writer identify the agents, publishers, magazines and production companies that are the best matches for the writers projects; helps draft submission documents like query letters, query-proposals, full book proposals, synopses, outlines and treatments if the writer needs help with these; and helps the writer understand and respond to responses from those agents, publishers, magazine editors and production companies when contact is made. If he knows an agent, publisher, magazine or production company appropriate for a writers work, he will recommend the writer to them.

Evaluation of a complete book manuscript or screenplay, whatever stage or draft, usually takes 3 hours; partial book manuscript, screenplay, or assortment of poems, articles or short stories, 2 hours. An evaluation provides a long email or phone critique of the work with some follow-up email exchange to clarify the craft matters needing attending to. Most writers blocks, no matter how persistent or immobilizing they have been for a writer, usually takes 1-2 hours to resolve. Coaching on an ongoing basis--by email, phone and/or face-to-face conferences--can be effective at as little as 2-hours per month; and his clients range from those who consult with him for an initial 2-6 hours and then go off to pursue their writing and writing projects on their own, through clients who retain him for daily or weekly coaching for extended periods of time. Every writer is different--by goals, experience, life schedule and budget.

As coach and consultant Bruces immediate goal is to see any writer launched as quickly as possible in the right direction.

Fees and billing: Work is billed by informal e-invoice after work is completed, and installments are acceptable. Bruce works within a writer's budget whatever its size, and his hourly fee is $90.