How to Find the Right Mentor for Your Writing

Introduce yourselves in the Comments and meet new friends & mentors!

Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on Unsplash

Hello, lovelies!

Wow, the Damsel paperback and movie release week was truly amazing. I saw you out there on social media talking about my book (and how the ending is different from the movie!) I also read all your emails and your comments on this newsletter, and I just want to THANK YOU for your tremendous enthusiasm and support for Damsel!

Today I want to talk about something many of you have asked me—How to find a mentor. So I’ve been thinking a lot about it and reflecting on my own career. What follows is framed through my experience as a writer, but I think it’s really applicable to any field you’re pursuing.

Also, Critique Partner & Writer Friend Matchup in the Comments — Introduce yourselves and meet new friends and mentors!

The Hubris of Newbie Evelyn

I still remember what I did as soon as I finished writing my very first manuscript, many years ago. I knew I was supposed to go out and find critique partners—other writers in my genre who would meet every month, read 10-15 pages of each other’s work, and give constructive feedback—but come on. I just wanted to bypass the slow stuff. Basically, pay for the Fast Trak lane and not sit stuck in traffic.

So I went out and hired a freelance editor to read my manuscript. He had formerly been the infamous Hunter S. Thompson’s editor, and because I thought my book deserved the best, I paid (way too much) money for his help.

But what I got back wasn’t helpful. It was not the advice I needed to make my manuscript into a bestseller and launch me into stardom.

However, it’s not that the editor wasn’t good at his job.

It’s that my writing wasn’t ready for his advice. I had skipped too many steps and fallen victim to my own naive hubris.

The best mentor for you is NOT the world experts or famous people in your field.

» It’s the people who are 1/2- or 1-step ahead of you. «

“But I already know everything that they know,” you’ll protest.

No, I guarantee you don’t. Because there are myriad things happening at the “level” above you that you don’t see because you’re not living it. (Yet! You will get there!)

For example, being a writer isn’t just about getting better at craft. It’s also about gaining experience in the industry:

• living in the query trenches,

• learning to revise when an agent reads your manuscript and asks for a R&R,

• understanding what a good book deal is,

• knowing what to do if your book sales tank or your publisher drops you…

And the writers who can help you best are the ones just a pace ahead of you, career-wise.

Their experiences are fresh in their memories, so they will remember all the nitty-gritty details.

• When I had gotten a literary agent but was not yet published, the best mentors I found were those writers who had just signed book deals.

• When I finally signed my own book deal for my debut coming out in 2016, my best mentors were the authors whose books were being published in 2015.

The problem with wanting to be mentored by someone who is 5 or 10 steps ahead of you in their career is that, as wonderful and generous as they might be, they just don’t remember all the small details that would be incredibly helpful for you to know.

Sure, you can ask me what the best way is to publicize your debut novel, but I won’t be as helpful as someone who just did it last year. Because the difference is that when I have a new book coming out, I already have a loyal and established reader base (you! you wonderful people!) You will be the first ones to buy my book and tell all your friends. Some of you have been with me for almost a decade!

So I don’t remember accurately anymore what it’s like to start from scratch and how to cultivate name recognition as a debut. Plus, the methods of getting publicity in 2015/2016 have completely changed now. (I mean, for context, Instagram was still a relatively new thing when I was ramping up for my debut.)

Where do you find these mentors?

Conferences are great for meeting people, no matter what industry you’re in. Also, places online like Substack can be great if you find your niche—there are newsletters and people in the Comments in almost any category you can think of.

For writers specifically:

Back when I was an unpublished, unagented writer, I met a lot of writers at writing conferences. I started in the YA world, so I loved the big summer conference for SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), as well as the Andrea Brown Literary Agency’s Big Sur Writing Workshops. (There are similar conferences for other genres, too. For example, Comic Cons are surprisingly great places to meet fantasy and sci-fi writers, if you attend the author panels and chat with other people in the audience.)

Nowadays, you can also meet like-minded writers online, because there are a lot of great writing communities which you can access from anywhere.

The WORDPLAY Book Club for Writers and Curious Readers is one example—every month, we are going to get together to read and discuss a book together from a writing perspective, and then we’ll have some bonus time for anyone who wants to hang out and chat about what they’re writing or ask me (and everyone else) for publishing industry advice.

Think about them as mentors with a lowercase “m” rather than a capital “M.”

You don’t need to formally approach someone and ask them to be your mentor. In fact, that might make them run away for fear of all the work it will create for them.

All you have to do, really, is become a friend, and you’ll learn from them. I learned so much from my friends Stacey Lee and Sabaa Tahir, who both published their debuts a year ahead of me. I did everything I could to hype up their books, and they generously shared their experiences leading up to launch—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because of them, I was very prepared when it was my turn the next year to debut a book.

But All The Successful Authors are Friends With Each Other!

I’ll tell you the big secret behind this—we all became friends when we were starting out.

Dana Elmendorf

and I became friends when neither of us had agents and no one knew our names. Same with me and Stacey Lee. I met Sabaa Tahir at a local writers’ get-together before her first book had come out, which was many, many years before she became a National Book Award and Printz Award winner.

When you become friends with other writers around the same stage of the journey as you, you get to grow up together!

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WRITER CONNECTIONS

If you’re looking for writer friends or critique partners, introduce yourselves in the Comments!

• Briefly in ALL CAPS, state:

  • the GENRE you write and

  • what you’re looking for—CRITIQUE PARTNER or WRITER FRIENDS

• In lower case, expand on that and introduce yourself a little more.

• Give as much as you ask (we are all about the spirit of generosity & kindness here!)

• Reply to at least 1 other Comment (even if it’s just to say something nice like, Your idea sounds great!)

• Examples:

  • FANTASY, CRITIQUE PARTNER - I’m Georgie R. R. Martine, and I am working on an epic fantasy about political intrigue and dragons. This is my second manuscript and I’ve revised it a bunch, but now I’m looking for a set of fresh eyes to give me some feedback (I think it might be too long??) Happy to return the favor on whatever you’re working on!

  • CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S FICTION, WRITER FRIENDS - Hi, I’m Jody Picoulty and I’m just looking for friends!

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Get your copy of DAMSEL!

The best way to support my writing is buying my books. THANK YOU!!

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My Book and Movie Release Calendar: 2024

• March 5th - Damsel movie tie-in paperback edition

• March 8th - Damsel movie on Netflix

• May 7th - The Hundred Loves of Juliet summer paperback edition

• July 30th - One Year Ago in Spain - NEW RELEASE