Do you need a writing mentor?

When I started making this series, a friend of mine very kindly offered up a whole series of questions that might work for it. This was one of them.

And it was interesting to me, because I have paid for writing mentoring before, and yet I’d never really thought about it. So now I have - lucky you.

Video script:

Hi, I’m Jess, a writer and careers advisor, and this is careers advice for writers. This video is about writing mentors... 

...and specifically, do you need one? As with all things, the answer to this is pretty simple. No – you don’t need a writing mentor. Whether or not you want one will depend on a few factors: 

What do you want a mentor to do for you? Mentors are usually writing professionals of some description or another (maybe they’re authors themselves, or publishing professionals, or academics) and they can offer things like accountability partnering, advice and guidance on your story, advice for approaching agents and other industry professionals, etc. They will usually help you set goals for where you want to be and in what sort of timeline. They won’t necessarily do intensive line edits on your work, or guarantee an introduction to a publisher – I guess this could happen, but in most cases that’s not likely.  

How much can you afford to spend on a mentor? A lot of what I said in earlier videos about writing courses applies here: is this good value for you, or are you going to end up paying for a service that isn’t serving you? A mentor is not a short cut to writing a bestseller, so I’d always be wary of throwing money at something just because it feels like professional development. Of course, none of this applies to mentorship schemes for underrepresented groups of writers – they are usually low or no cost, and given that they’re explicitly designed to remove barriers for those groups, I’m a lot less cynical about those! (There are questions about whether endless mentorship schemes are enough to remove those barriers, but that’s another discussion entirely). 

Are you looking for a long-term mentorship relationship? This applies no matter how much the mentorship costs, because regardless, it will also cost your time. Check the terms of engagement closely – is the mentor going to check in with you for an hour weekly over the next four months, and what do you hope to achieve with those hours? It could be the thing that keeps your writing on track! Alternatively, if you’re actually just looking for someone to give you developmental advice on your plot, a one-off editorial report might be a better option. 

What kind of support do you need? Is this just about getting your book finished, or are you actually looking for career development advice, as in, how to make money as an author? You’ll be looking for different types of mentors in both cases, and for the latter, I would suggest an agent will become one of your mentors if you choose to go the traditional route with your writing. 

Can you get all of that in a different way? I will always come back to this – do you have a writing group who read each others’ work? Can you ask one of your friends to be an accountability partner? Ask yourself what the real value would be from a mentor, and if you’re convinced it’s right, then it’s right. 

Next video I’m going to look at some specific pros and cons of mentoring. 

Part two: pros and cons

Video script

Hi, I’m Jess, a writer and careers advisor, and this is careers advice for writers. This video is about writing mentors... 

...and specifically what are some of the pros and cons? In the last video I asked how you know it’s a good choice for you, so in this video I wanted to get a little bit more specific on the potential benefits and pitfalls, because that could help you answer that question! 

Pro: You get to work with a professional. They might have more knowledge of the industry than your writing friends, and could maybe give you some valuable insights or even reality checks. 

Con: Mentorships are often wildly expensive, and some of those insights could well be things you could get from listening to interviews and podcasts – I really like the Publishing Rodeo podcast for example, where guests are often super candid. 

Pro: This is an objective outsider, so they could give you a fresh perspective on your writing, or help you see solutions you just weren’t able to identify yourself. 

Con: What if you just don’t... vibe? I’ve spoken to friends who have struggled with mentoring because their mentor couldn’t see their vision, or had really specific ideas that felt too prescriptive for the writer. I also had a mentor once, who I really respected, but she was writing for a younger age group than I was and it felt like she wanted to push me to write younger, and it didn’t work for me. 

Pro: If you’re a teacher’s pet like I am, an external person giving you deadlines can really help keep you on track. 

Con: Mentoring, by its nature, is supposed to be driven by the mentee – that's you. Some mentors take that really seriously and they won’t chase you if you don’t get in touch, assuming you must be too busy. So you need to contract out what your relationship will look like, up front. 

Pro: It can force you to prioritise your writing, because you’re paying for a service, you’ve set the time aside to have your meetings, so of course you need to be professionalise the way you write. It can be a fantastic tool for changing your mindset if you do that classic thing of “oh, this is just a hobby, I can put it on the back burner” - I mean, you’re allowed to do that from time to time, but it will slow things down! 

Con: It can equally become another means of procrastination (almost like doing a TikTok series of career advice for writers can). Be honest with yourself: are you signing up for courses and mentoring programmes because it helps you write, or because it feels like it helps you write? Two wildly different things.