Online Consultations

When I first learned that I would be doing online consultations I was slightly intimidated, having not had much experience video sessions or Skype in general. My only experience with Skype had been when my mother would video-call my uncle for Thanksgivings or Christmases so that we could see our long-distant cousins in Delaware. My sister and I would crowd in behind my mother and my grandmother who would talk extra slow and loud, perhaps thinking the Skype session required this kind of exaggerated speech. Sometimes my uncle’s face would freeze, his mouth hanging open, mid-sentence and his eyes shut in a blink. A lot of times there were What?s and What did you say?s. I was kind of dreading trying to consult a writer for fifty minutes, knowing well the many hijinks that came with Skype sessions.

On a recent Wednesday evening, I knew I had an online consultation at 8 PM. I printed the writer’s work and opened the plastic bag carrying a brand new headset, carefully laying aside the yellow sticky note that clarified: FOR ANNALISE. I adjusted them and readjusted them, trying to find the perfect fit before signing onto Skype and calling my evening client. At 8 PM on the dot, I called my client, who answered on second ring. And to my surprise, the connection was clear, and sitting before me was a client just like any of my others who come into The Writing Studio. At first, we did have trouble hearing each other, but once volumes were adjusted, we were not interrupted by any technical difficulty.

One thing I didn’t anticipate was not being able to share the document on the screen within Skype so that the client and I could both see the paper together, like a Google Doc. Because of this, we simply had to adjust our language and be specific about what paragraph and which line we were looking at at the time.

My client stated that they hadn’t been in school for about seven years and that they felt like they needed to get back into the swing of writing. We read through their work carefully, line by line, and I was able to provide comments for things that they could choose to do, if they wanted. The session was successful in that the client gained confidence again in their own writing, saw ways of how they could write differently, and even in how I gained a new understanding of a topic I knew little about before this session took place. We used the whole fifty minutes and by the end, the client was asking for my hours and if we could do another online consultation again soon. Gladly, I provided them, and left for the evening feeling the rewards of my job, and also, a new confidence in proceeding with online consultations. 

By Annalise Mabe, MFA student in Creative Writing and Writing Consultant