In most sports (golf, baseball, etc), even top pros use coaches. My impression is that some top musicians (classical?) continue take lessons, but I’m not sure all do. And I don’t know about on-classical musicians. Singers take voice lessons. Do top actors take lessons? Do top writers attend workshops?
I would welcome a discussion of which activities top participants rely on ongoing “coaching/instruction”, and which don’t, and the reasons for the difference.
Well, I doubt if Eric Clapton takes guitar lessons these days… 
I do wish I‘d had piano lessons as a kid though: I can work things out from notation but I don’t have that automatic muscle memory drilled in which allows one to sight-read in real time…
Don’t really know about other arts. I rather doubt if Picasso took a lot of lessons, at least once he got started?
Voice lessons and sports activities… presumably this is more of a technical thing, focusing on very specific aspects?
I doubt if, say, Heinlein or John D McDonald had anything to do with workshops when they were writing?
I get the impression that established writers are sometimes invited as ‘emeritus tutors’, but that’s more for the benefit of the workshop rather than the writer, I suspect. But I have never been to a writing workshop… anyone who has care to comment?
Apologies for the typo in the title.
For whatever reason, I was watching a movie and was wondering if the very established actor (whom I personally do not think is great) went to acting lessons, or received any “coaching” other than perhaps dialect coaching. I guess direction is a sort of such feedback for an actor.
Contrasting, (most but not all) pro golfers have a whole team of folk working on the various aspects of their game. I wonder at what point classical musicians stop getting lessons. I THINK a lot of singers - at least operatic - have ongoing coaching.
Just struck me as curious what factors affected whether participants at the top level of an activity perceive a need for continued teaching or not.
With art, a person can succeed entirely without lessons (well, depending on genre) since art all depends on your customers/consumers. With modern art, such as splashing paint haphazardly on canvas, that doesn’t need any teaching. If your customer is willing to pay $800,000 for that, then you’ve got it made. With more complex arts, though, like if you’re trying to paint Rembrandt-style, then you might not be able to get there on your own.
Yeah - I thought of that. But a lot of classical artists started off as students in the studios of established masters. And then, when they make it on their own, they had their own studios.
Currently, it seems a lot of younger folk pursue fine arts degrees. Maybe for them they decide they no longer need teaching when their stuff starts selling. And then there are untrained folk/outsider artists…
I can imagine - say - an artist who specializes in oil portraits might take lessons on watercolor landscapes or some regional or historical method. But I can also imagine them also just trying things out on their own.
But they had editors, who are essentially coaches, especially one like Heinlein’s John C. Campbell.
Maybe. I suspect Heinlein was smart enough to figure out what Campbell liked to publish and tailored his submitted work to fit.
Some later Heinlein could have done with a stronger editor, but by then as a bestseller he was untouchable!
Heinlein and several other writers in the Astounding Stories stable were actively mentored by Campbell. Most of Heinlein’s Future History is based on Campbell’s ideas.
Hypothesizing…
If you’re in professional sports, to take an example, nearly everything that you do is measurable. Whether you’re hitting your optimum is something that can be tracked, and new strategies can be tested and directly compared.
If, on the other hand, you’re an author then the only metric that really matters is whether you’re selling copies or not. Being the best, most artistic, most distinguished author is of relatively little economic value since that’s pretty well inversely related to the finances of the industry. Shlock, low quality material is the bread and butter of the literary world, not arcane, poetic masterpieces.
It’s also not clear that even successful authors are going to make enough money to make it worth having a coach. And if they did have a coach, how do you know that the output is from the author since the medium is “ideas”?
I’d suggest that the two key criteria are:
As a sidenote, I might mention “muses” in the artistic mediums.
I think I’ve read in the “Acknowledgements” of some books, where authors thank workshops, retreats, or such things. Not sure if those were allowing finances and place to write, or if there is some “stimulation” and feedback involved. I’ve long been aware of the U of Iowa’s writers’ workshop (In the next state over.) ISTR pretty accomplished writers have attended, but I don’t really know. https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu
Well. I’ve put thousands into writing instruction - most notably I took a developmental editing training/certification and studied a specific methodology for two years in hopes it would help me with my own work. But there’s really not much out there you can’t learn from a book. Get yourself a copy of McKee’s story and you’ll about have it covered. A lot of the other advice is really idiosyncratic.
The issue is, writers don’t want to believe that. We want to believe there’s some secret that’s going to make it easier. It doesn’t get easier. And I have gotten better, but I can’t tell if that’s because of any instruction I’ve had, or just the years of effort I’ve spent working on my craft.
Stephen King has said, “It’s possible to make a good writer great, but not a bad writer good.”
I am a long-time member of a good writers group. We’ve been going on ten years and most of us are good to great. But a good writers group is rare as hens teeth.
So for the purposes of this thread I’ll say it’s not the professional coaching that matters so much as the exposure of your work to feedback by competent writers, even if those writers are just your friends.
Is this how the public views writers (or artists)?
When I think “I really want to get better!” I’m NOT thinking about money. I want to accomplish what I set out to do; to evoke a place, a person, a setting, a certain emotion (with words or art; I do both). I want to make people feel something!
I’ll cut to what I see as the chase.
In sports, all the glory and money goes to the very few at the very pinnacle. And being part of that exalted few is directly tied to their performance at the physical skill. That can be trained and drilled and has direct measurable consequences.
Music and art are businesses too. Where the top-earning performers are few. But they become top earners via celebrity, not via slightly better performance skill than the band from the next town over.
I know from the musician thread that you dabbled in performing locally as a young adult. You might even have made some money doing that so that makes you a “pro” in one small sense. But you’re not in it to win it. Other bands & groups seem to be.
I’m not sure what motivates e.g. Taylor Swift or Garth Brookes. But I bet it has a lot to do with making money by the boatload. To my take on the OP’s point, Swift and Brookes don’t compete to be super-well paid by being slightly better at singing or dancing or playing. They compete on generating buzz, on hiring the right producers and directors and choreographers and song writers and … The whole corporate business of showmanship. And it’s a darn good bet there are consultants out there who sell the service of improving the business of running the business of a musical group. Those are the “coaches” those kinds of performers hire.
For musical or actor people farther down the food chain, they have agents. Who specialize again in providing business services to the performers competing with other performers to be better more successful businesses, not better emoters or characters or singers or players.
I think you’ve read something wrong. I didn’t mention what people think authors are trying to accomplish. I think that most people would agree with your assessment of what the average author hopes to do.
But that’s different from the finances of the literary world.
I don’t have a vast connection to successful authors but I do know one successful artist and they made conscious choices to keep the material light and approachable, to make the mysteries not too deep, to throw in some fan service, and yet to shy away from focusing on the deep and faithful fans and their desires (which would be to the detriment of new and lighter readers).
To be sure, there are hacks that almost certainly know and understand that they are nothing more than hacks. But I’d lean strongly towards believing that JK Rowling and Steven King, despite still wanting to turn out solid and new works that make people happy, still understand that there are certain parameters for broad acceptance and big numbers. (They also understand that they are not Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)
Presumably, they’re relying on their agent to help keep them in the straight and narrow.
Under their level, it’s just not that important.
One category of experts who wouldn’t have coaches would be those who are creating their own area of expertise from scratch. They might eventually coach the next generation in their field, but there’s nobody to coach them.
Well, I think most Stand-up-Comedians are self-taught by doing it and watching it themselves at clubs.
I don’t believe mentoring, coaching, or anything like that is all too common. Maybe some helpful promotion or gigs to open for bigger comedians, but its a lonely job in many ways.
I also want to point out the vast majority of writing coaches are doing it because they couldn’t make money as writers, or they are making some money as writers but it’s not enough for them to support themselves. There is way more money in grifting writers than being one.
That’s a good exception. Comics mostly hone their craft on direct and immediate feedback from their audience, not a mentor or coach.
Coaching. AFAIK there are no coaching coaches.