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Mentoring New Writers
Who helped you learn to become a published writer? Did a teacher tell you that you have writing talent? Did an author teach you how to write your first stories or encourage you to get published? If so, now that you’ve become published, it’s time to step forward and help another writer. If no one ever helped you, then you have even more motivation. You know how much a mentor could have mattered.
I move regularly, and everywhere I go, I find people who would like to launch a writing career but aren’t quite sure how to go about it. I enjoy spending a few hours answering their questions and talking shop. It’s a great way to help someone out the way others helped me and to become a part of your new community.
What Does a Mentor Do?
As a mentor it’s important to encourage and motivate, not discourage. New writers often have many weaknesses, and you may even feel the writer has little chance of success once you’ve read some of his work. Everyone who sets out to write won’t go on to a career, because not everyone is willing to put the time and training into it. Some people don’t have the talent, but writing is one of those rare jobs you can do just for fun, even if you never sell. If you encourage the prospective writer and help him improve his skills, he will always have a way to express his creativity and to serve others with whatever skills he does possess.
Initially, most writers just want to ask questions and hear the answers from someone who has been published or who knows more than he does. Let him take the lead, but help him be realistic. Admit that few writers become wealthy or even support themselves on their writing. (If the person is at your house, that might be obvious, of course.) Emphasize that it takes time, patience, hard work, and rejection. Many beginners believe they will sit down one day, produce a masterpiece in an hour or so, and sell it to the highest paying magazine on the first try, thus insuring fame and fortune. The kindest thing we can do as mentors is to remove that fantasy, so the first rejection doesn’t cause them to quit. I tell writers you’re not a real writer until you get your first rejection slip. I have one book out and one on the way, and I still get rejections. It’s part of the job.
How to Critique a New Writer
After the basics are out of the way, if you’re brave, offer to read a manuscript if they have one. Unless you’re certain they really want intense critiquing, be gentle. Many people tell me to tear it apart, but then their feelings get hurt if I do. Unless I’m sure, I try to choose one or two things to help them fix. For instance, the first time I worked with a mentor, she taught me how to deepen the side characters, and ignored all the other faults of my book. I wrote the entire manuscript (never submitted because it was a practice novel), focused just on that one task. She did it by asking a single question: “What was the father doing during the Viet Nam war?” Ummm…I had no idea. The story was about the teenaged daughter and everyone else was shadowy and half drawn. I sat down and figured out what both parents were doing, and my whole story become far more complicated. She gently guided me through the process of using that new knowledge.
If, instead, she had said, “Good grief, the parents are barely real. You’ll never sell anything if you don’t flesh out the other characters,” I might have given up. Having a specific task to perform—finding out what the father had been doing at a set moment in time—gave me a direction and the confidence to take the story into surprising corners.
Be gentle with those you mentor. Don’t fix everything at once. Guide them slowly to improvement and loan them books to read that will help them without requiring you to say anything. Remember, your most important job is that of cheerleader.
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