Why consider mentoring?
Editing involves someone fixing errors
in your manuscript. It's a fairly passive process, for the most part. Mentoring is on-the-job training, where your mentor highlights
issues for you, explains what the problem is in each case, and helps you to learn the skills
required to fix them yourself. It takes place one chapter or chunk at a time, unlike editing which usually happens all in one go. This gives both you and your mentor the chance to watch your craft develop and strengthen.
You can think of it like this. At the end of editing on a book, you have a more polished manuscript. At the end of mentoring on a book, you also have a more polished manuscript, but in addition, you will have become a better writer. This is especially true when you put a little effort into it. For the best results, we recommend going over the notes you get for each chapter, fixing the issues involved, and then applying those lessons to the subsequent chapter before sending it to your mentor. Always ask questions about things you’re not sure of, and ideally do any suggested reading. We warmly recommend this article on Writer Beware on the benefits of growing as a writer.
A mentoring course on a novel will generally do the work of both heavy editing and copy editing, usually at a lower cost than a heavy edit. Mentoring progresses chapter by chapter, and costs 2.0 cents per word for each round. You submit each chapter as you work through the process, receiving your mentor’s annotated version in return, which you then revise. It can take two or sometimes three rounds of revision and feedback to fix all the issues and get your manuscript fully polished. Each round of work on a chapter is charged according to its length as it’s submitted, rather than its original length. It can take from six to nine months to work through to a polished novel in this way, but you truly have full ownership of every step.
In short, mentoring is a personal, one on one workshop course that teaches you how to address the essentials of writing. These range from the key backbones of the craft through to subtle and complex techniques that you can use now and in the future.
You can think of it like this. At the end of editing on a book, you have a more polished manuscript. At the end of mentoring on a book, you also have a more polished manuscript, but in addition, you will have become a better writer. This is especially true when you put a little effort into it. For the best results, we recommend going over the notes you get for each chapter, fixing the issues involved, and then applying those lessons to the subsequent chapter before sending it to your mentor. Always ask questions about things you’re not sure of, and ideally do any suggested reading. We warmly recommend this article on Writer Beware on the benefits of growing as a writer.
A mentoring course on a novel will generally do the work of both heavy editing and copy editing, usually at a lower cost than a heavy edit. Mentoring progresses chapter by chapter, and costs 2.0 cents per word for each round. You submit each chapter as you work through the process, receiving your mentor’s annotated version in return, which you then revise. It can take two or sometimes three rounds of revision and feedback to fix all the issues and get your manuscript fully polished. Each round of work on a chapter is charged according to its length as it’s submitted, rather than its original length. It can take from six to nine months to work through to a polished novel in this way, but you truly have full ownership of every step.
In short, mentoring is a personal, one on one workshop course that teaches you how to address the essentials of writing. These range from the key backbones of the craft through to subtle and complex techniques that you can use now and in the future.
Who is a good candidate for mentoring?
If you've completed a novel and you have no formal writing education, mentoring can be a good way to be in control of revisions to your work while at the same time gaining knowledge about how to spot and fix flaws in plot, characterization, story structure, pacing, and other essential aspects of the writing craft. If you have some writing education, but you don't feel confident in your skills yet, mentoring offers an opportunity to improve, and build on what you already know.
The main reason mentoring works for us, and why we recommend it, is that it speeds up the learning process a lot. You can absolutely learn to write without a mentor, of course. There are many great resources out there – books, websites, good critique groups. We’ve used all of these. Early on, we read everything we could get our hands on, but there was a lot we didn't know, and it’s not easy to discover answers to questions you don’t know how to ask. Mentoring cuts through that gap, leading you to answers you didn’t necessarily know existed.
An alternate solution to this problem of course is to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing fiction. It will certainly provide a lot of skills, but it also costs a heck of a lot of money. Salome has two Master’s degrees in writing, one from the US and one from England. They were not cheap, but they’re very useful for teaching and training purposes. We feel that so long as you’re not trying to become an English Professor, mentoring is a very useful and practical alternative to spending tens of thousands of dollars on a degree.
We are only able to take a few mentoring clients each year, so please get in touch to discuss it in the first instance.
Why this mentoring program?
There are many mentoring programs out there, so why this one? Firstly, it's a very personal matter to us. We see mentoring as a way of helping others. Having worked extensively in social services settings, we find that aspect of it gives a deeper meaning to our work. In other words, we want to help you become the best writer you can be. Secondly, we understand that not everyone learns in the same way. If you don't understand something, we'll try to find other ways to explain or show you until you get it. Thirdly, we're knowledgeable, experienced, and easy to get along with.
You can read some testimonials from clients here.
The main reason mentoring works for us, and why we recommend it, is that it speeds up the learning process a lot. You can absolutely learn to write without a mentor, of course. There are many great resources out there – books, websites, good critique groups. We’ve used all of these. Early on, we read everything we could get our hands on, but there was a lot we didn't know, and it’s not easy to discover answers to questions you don’t know how to ask. Mentoring cuts through that gap, leading you to answers you didn’t necessarily know existed.
An alternate solution to this problem of course is to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing fiction. It will certainly provide a lot of skills, but it also costs a heck of a lot of money. Salome has two Master’s degrees in writing, one from the US and one from England. They were not cheap, but they’re very useful for teaching and training purposes. We feel that so long as you’re not trying to become an English Professor, mentoring is a very useful and practical alternative to spending tens of thousands of dollars on a degree.
We are only able to take a few mentoring clients each year, so please get in touch to discuss it in the first instance.
Why this mentoring program?
There are many mentoring programs out there, so why this one? Firstly, it's a very personal matter to us. We see mentoring as a way of helping others. Having worked extensively in social services settings, we find that aspect of it gives a deeper meaning to our work. In other words, we want to help you become the best writer you can be. Secondly, we understand that not everyone learns in the same way. If you don't understand something, we'll try to find other ways to explain or show you until you get it. Thirdly, we're knowledgeable, experienced, and easy to get along with.
You can read some testimonials from clients here.
