This isn\u2019t about women, it\u2019s not about men and it\u2019s only a bit about mentoring. Clearly I just like a good title. Listen, I don\u2019t care whether someone is a man or a woman, if they\u2019re a writer then I think there comes a point when they want guidance or mentoring. Or if I\u2019m wrong, then I\u2019ve just had a weird run of coincidence from writers who have the same weakness I think we all do.<\/p>\n
So this week I turned down a man who wanted to hire me to mentor him. I have done mentoring on specific types of work or for specific types of writers and he didn\u2019t fit either so I turned him down because I wasn\u2019t the right person for him.<\/p>\n
I did suggest things he could look into, though, and there was one particular point of his that I thought I could help with. He wanted to know whether he was approaching writing stories correctly, if he were doing the right thing. I told him who cares? If you end up with a good piece, it doesn\u2019t matter if you write it in crayon on every second Tuesday of the year.<\/p>\n
Half a beat later, a woman writer joked that what she wants most is someone to look over her work every quarter of an hour and tell her whether it\u2019s going well or not.<\/p>\n
You know she wasn\u2019t joking. I know she wasn\u2019t joking. She knew she wasn\u2019t joking. So I told her in all seriousness that this would be a Very, Very Bad Idea.<\/p>\n
She thought I was joking.<\/p>\n
It happened again this week with another couple of writers so it\u2019s been on my mind but I think these first two reveal a remarkably similar issue. They both want someone else to tell them if they\u2019re right. That means, then, that they both think there is a right way to do something.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something else, too, and I\u2019m struggling to describe this. Let me try this way and you can tell me if I\u2019m making sense. I think both of these writers unconsciously think that writing comes out in a straight line. That you get the first paragraph right and then you write the second. That you can show the first page, say, to someone, and they\u2019ll give you a pass\/fail.<\/p>\n
But writing is a mess. No, more than that, writing is a fight. I don\u2019t want to sound all male about it and I don\u2019t equate writing to violence nor expect all writing to be conflict. Yet it is always a scrap. How\u2019s that? It\u2019s scrappy. You\u2019re pulling this idea over there and nudging or shoving or easing it into another shape. You\u2019re kneading the words and you\u2019re fashioning one single loaf out of countless ingredients.<\/p>\n
Possibly you\u2019re making a really rubbish analogy and stretching it out in the hope that somewhere along the line it will make sense. Fail.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t read your first paragraph because there\u2019s no point until you\u2019ve finished the whole piece. Then if I read, say, your script, then I do know from page one whether it\u2019s working or not. That\u2019s not some brilliance on my part, it\u2019s because it is very quickly obvious when something is a fail. The only writer who can\u2019t see it is the writer who wrote it. <\/p>\n
But good or bad, instantly obvious or not, it needs the whole thing there or all anyone can tell you is if you type well.<\/p>\n
That man I turned down, by the way, wrote a very good email. He\u2019s a writer. I\u2019ve read pieces by that woman and she writes with verve and life and vigour. She\u2019s a writer.<\/p>\n
They just both have to get on with writing. So do I. So do you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This isn\u2019t about women, it\u2019s not about men and it\u2019s only a bit about mentoring. Clearly I just like a … Continue reading