Testimonials
“My writing sessions with Helen Rubinstein have been the most intellectually rewarding and inspiring experiences of my professional writing career. I am an academic historian and am currently completing a draft of my first book manuscript. In May 2019, I asked Helen to guide me through the final stages. I was paralyzed in the work and felt frustrated enough to contemplate abandoning the project.
The previous summer, I had first worked with Helen at a writing retreat, where she introduced strategies and approaches to non-fiction writing that taught me to build an emotional relationship for readers to the historical actors.
Her lessons on compassionate and compelling storytelling guided me in the year since our meeting, however I was swimming in too much material and I needed her help prioritizing. I lacked the ability to fit the pieces together for my audience, even though the argument seemed clear to me. In our work together, she has taught me that organization is the most important yet least taught skill of writing.
Helen has helped me accept uncertainty, instead of avoiding it. In several places, my writing was overstuffed with details to compensate for what I could not explain or possibly discover. For those sections, she taught me strip away the excesses, leaving the bare bones of the argument and analysis to build upon. The revised chapters are more honest and more persuasive.
The most productive parts of our sessions have been Helen’s clarifying questions, where she points to rushed conclusions that deserve deeper reflection because of their place in the overall argument. In our back and forth, Helen pushes me to think out loud and on the page and to explore alternative interpretations and possibilities. Through this process, I have also gained a more precise language for the historical relationships and changes that I struggled to describe on my own. More importantly, I have grown as a writer and have learned to consider readers’ experiences more in my writing.
I am grateful for her generosity as a reader, her incredible ability to ask the critical questions of my work, and her range of ideas for moving forward in the writing process. While my work with Helen will end, her lessons will serve me well beyond.” —Heather Ruth Lee, Assistant Professor of History, NYU Shanghai
“I would recommend Helen’s coaching to anyone looking for a guiding writing light, trusted voice, and general doula-type for any creative (or non-creative) project. I would also and especially recommend Helen’s coaching to anyone skeptical of expertise, disdainful of writing advice, burned out on feedback, or who might be reluctant to share their work in its early stages. In more than a decade of various approaches to writing—on my own, informally with others, and through an MFA—my sessions with Helen are the first time I’ve left conversations about my writing feeling consistently and significantly rejuvenated (even inspired), with a clear sense of direction while also newly open to and aware of the possibilities of my writing. If I had known of Helen’s services earlier, I would have skipped all the other stuff.
When we began our sessions, I was “blocked” and unsure which of several deadend projects to continue with, if at all. In our work together, I have observed not just a profound change in the novel I thought was forestalled beyond recovery, but a genuine transformation in how I think about writing. As a result of Helen’s coaching, particularly her generous readings (as in, able to see what could be there as well as what is on the page already) and incisive questions, things seem possible in my work that I never previously imagined or allowed. My approach to the creative process has been fundamentally changed far beyond the scope of the project we work on together.
Helen is extraordinary on every level you’d want a writing coach to be—an incredible listener and reader, psychologically astute, practically helpful, pedagogically skilled, imaginative, engaged, and genuinely fun.” —L. Morris, fiction & nonfiction writer
“In my work with Helen, and in the work I have seen her carry out with other colleagues, I have been humbled by her ability to read and offer feedback with both incredible generosity and incisive directiveness. She has helped me unpack my dense thoughts and drafts to uncover the core of the story embedded within through close reading, deft questioning, and tender conversation.
In addition to my own writing, I have brought Helen in as a writing coach and consultant for other collaborative projects, including a collection of essays, Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food, and a writing workshop for the food studies program I organize. In these spaces, there has been overwhelming positive feedback for Helen’s sensitive coaching and transformational guidance. Participants have continued to recall Helen’s influence for years to come. She is truly a gem.” —Anna Zeide, Associate Professor of History and Food Studies, Virginia Tech
“Helen Rubinstein is an expert writing coach who led our group of historians in sessions on radical revision, generative writing, and how to provide descriptive feedback for drafts-in-progress. Her leadership helped us to find the space in our writing to let the words breathe, to show our thinking on the page. Helen taught our group to think about the function of narrative structures and especially to consider creating a structure based on content. I would recommend Helen as a coach and her workshops to any writer or writing group, fiction or nonfiction, working on a scholastic monograph or a novel.” —Nicole Mahoney, New-York Historical Society Center for Women’s History
“I met virtually with Helen several times to talk through an essay I had been working on for several years. She asked difficult, attentive questions about my essay and I felt safe thinking through new ideas out loud with her. Her approach to coaching struck me as necessarily unconventional. I am still learning from her and her writing.” —Rachel Castro
“Helen read a draft of my novel in which I had lost confidence. I wouldn't have been able to move forward with the project without having her generous, careful, intelligent collaboration.” —Rebecca Entel
“In just meeting with Helen for fifteen minutes or so, I already felt like my essay has become significantly stronger and that her advice and ways to think about writing will benefit my crafting of words for years to come. She was kind, forceful when necessary, and genuinely interested in our work.” —Historian from group workshop
“Helen knows how to ask incisive, important questions. She takes a thoughtful, kindhearted approach, always looking to be of service you and your writing. Her feedback on my memoir manuscript was immensely helpful, allowing me to expand the work in ways I otherwise would've missed. I loved working with Helen and would happily work with her again.” —Brooke R.
Below are testimonials from the group workshop I conducted with the authors of Acquired Tastes.
