Lessons From Almost-Land or How to be Your Own Writing Mentor

Melissa Jenson is here to chat about becoming her own mentor and she is sharing tons of practical tips for writers to follow. If you’re ready to take your manuscript to a higher level, this post is for you!

Lessons From Almost-Land or How to be Your Own Writing Mentor

By Melissa Jenson

During the past nine months I have applied to three different writing mentorship programs: Pitch Wars, Author Mentor Match, and Write Mentor Summer Programme. I also applied to RevPit, a similar contest for winning yourself an editor.

Though this frequent daisy picking has led to nothing but “loves-me-nots” and a couple of painful “almosts,” I have learned and grown a lot as a writer. I feel like I’ve squeezed out every ounce of helpful suggestions and opportunities these contests have provided:

· Tips-and-tricks Twitter feeds

· Craft book recommendations

· Direct feedback from mentors/editors (whether they read my full MS or not)

· Painful but necessary truth-bombs about how the whole publishing industry is subjective

· The writerly community I joined (THE BEST PART! Go #MGWaves!)

I like to think I have taken all of those ingredients and turned them into a delightful blood-sweat-and-tears-spiked lemonade. Mmm, spicy!

If you are a fiction writer with publishing ambitions, I recommend submitting to all of these contests that apply to you, but I also recommend not waiting for lightning to strike in the meantime and instead becoming your own mentor.

How does one become their own mentor?

First, let’s consider what you get from a mentor. I think the main things are:

A CHEERLEADER!

AN INSIDER’S PERSPECTIVE!

CRAFT INSIGHT!

A REVISION GUIDE and HAND-HOLDER!

There may be more things and you are welcome to share them in the comments. I’m just an also-ran attempting to make something out of the experience, not an all-knowing being. However, since this is a blog and not a conversation, we’re going to forge ahead with my ideas.

So…can you DIY a cheerleader?

Sort of. You may have heard this one before from your Mom, your kindergarten teacher, or your therapist, but it’s the truth: to make a friend you have to be a friend. So, unfortunately, introverts, that means you have to reach out—small talk optional. Send a tweet, post on a website, search forums on GoodReads. Do whatever you need to do to search out people in your same situation. It could be as simple as a tweet like this: “I write Medieval Romance. Wanna swap? #writingcommunity.” Remember to give the type of feedback to others that you want to receive. If you have a chance to join a group, go for it and participate. Soon you may have a whole bunch of cheerleaders, some of whom may have an insider’s perspective and craft insight, too! True, they won’t feel obligated to focus on just you, but they just might stay with you through your whole journey. Someday you may even plan a group cruise. One can dream.

What about that insider perspective?

Yeah, so this one could require some work because there’s a lot of resources out there to sort through. But when you’re making lemonade, you gotta use some lemons. Without further ado, here’s a long list: Follow agents on Twitter, watch interviews and info sessions on YouTube, sign-up for Zooms with industry professionals, ask questions from people in your group who sign with agents, attend writing conferences, listen to podcasts, scour the blogs, read all the info on Query Tracker, subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace, go to the library. Once you’ve looked into all that, you’ll probably find more resources of your own. Remember to pay it forward by bringing the knowledge you gain to your group of hopefuls!

Next up . . . craft insight.

There are a lot of possibilities out there to level-up your knowledge but two of the most reliable and accessible are conferences and craft books. Make sure you look at a list of topics before signing up for any conference. Some of them are quite expensive and not all the topics/events will apply to you. If you’re doing Kid Lit, I heartily recommend WriteOnCon. It’s affordable and there were several helpful craft-focused topics in the most recent year. Now onto books . . . I know you already know what you’re doing, kind of, for the most part, and that you’ve already read Bird-by-Bird, probably, and that you know how to make characters feel real and compelling and scenes feel alive and full of tension. BUT! There’s a lot more insight out there that can make you better at these things and can help you plan/fix a book that has all the pacing, character arcs, plot twists, and satisfying endings that you haven’t quite mastered. I read Story Engineering by Larry Brooks and Story Genius by Lisa Cron as recommended by Pitch Wars mentor and debut author Jessica Vitalis and they legitimately changed my process and helped me draft a completely new manuscript post-Pitch Wars during NaNoWriMo 2020. When you read craft books, really use them. Do the exercises to help you go from idea to concept to awesome plan OR to strengthen the manuscript you are currently working on. I’ve also heard great things about Save the Cat Writes a Novel, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, and Riveting Your Reader with Deep Point of View.

This last one is a doozy. How—short of kidnapping—are you going to get your own manuscript-specific Revision Process Guide-person to hold your hand through the process of taking the bones of your book and turning them into a glittering rainbow of genius?

The answer to this one comes in several parts, so buckle up! Actually, maybe take a potty break first.

Ready now? Okay. The difficulty with improving something that you wrote is that you’re still you. It can be hard to have the ego distance to see what your manuscript needs. But distance is the key to being your own mentor. And friends. Friends are key, too.

1) Beta Readers/Critique Partners:

The first thing you’re going to need is other people: Beta Readers and Critique Partners. These two have been written about throughout the google-verse so I’m not going to get into them except to echo what everyone says. They are essential and invaluable to making your book the best it can be. The generally accepted number of readers is 3-5, and that sounds pretty good to me, but you also might want to think about spacing them out so you can get a take on an earlier draft that will help you see high-level plot issues and a take on a later draft to focus on line-edits that take your sentences from blundering to exquisite.

2) Better High-Level Revising:

Next, you’re going to need a way to detach yourself a bit from high-level revision so you can do a better job. A mentor-level job, if you will. Even if your betas and CPs point out the stuff that isn’t working, they are unlikely to pinpoint exactly how to fix it. They are also unlikely to brainstorm ways to enhance and take your story to the next level, especially ones that really resonate with you. If they do, never let them go! In the meantime, I learned this handy revision technique from WriteOnCon as described by Joanna Ruth Meyer which helps you detach your ego from high-level plot/character fixes. It may not be for everybody, but you’re smart, so you can probably figure out how to make something similar work for you. Since the video is no longer available, the short version is this: put an outline of your book into a spreadsheet and then rearrange it to your heart’s content.

The simplest set-up of the spreadsheet is in columns with these titles: chapter #/scene #/scene title/scene description/notes, but you can also include things like act#, #words per scene, world-building elements, character development, etc. You also may want to track certain things for specific genres—like the romance development or the clues for a mystery. The amazing thing that happens when it’s all outlined is that you can step back from the page and evaluate each plot point and figure out what’s working, what’s missing, what needs to move or get deleted, what’s taking up too much space or not enough space, if the character is progressing enough, or too fast or slow, which scenes can be combined, and more. This allows you to really be your own mentor doing a high-level first pass! Make notes of all the changes that need to be made in the spreadsheet itself first (this is mentor you) and then transfer that to the manuscript (a job for mentee you). And you can use lots of colors, which makes it seem less like drudgery.

[In between steps, apply chocolate. Because being the mentor AND the mentee is hard!]

3) Better Scene-Level Revising:

For this one, you’re going to need to print out your book if at all possible—for the ego-detachment factor. If you stay in your laptop or wherever you drafted, then you’re staying in your own head. The print-out will let you trick yourself into the mindset of reading someone else’s book—well sort of, anyway. Lemons, remember? For this part, it helps to know your weaknesses on the page. Are you overly descriptive or not nearly descriptive enough? Are your scenes easy/hard to follow? Do you tell when you should show? Do you forget that people are not just talking heads in a dialogue? Anyway, figure it out and make it color-coded so you can hate the process a little less. When I did this recently, I focused on:

· BLOCKING = show this person moving in this scene

· DESCRIPTION = what does the scene look like, sound like, smell like, etc.?

· VOICE = please fix this—this is not how this character would say this thing

· CHARACTERIZATION = throw in a fun detail to help the reader know the character

I also think SHOW (instead of telling) would be a great category. Once you have your categories, you get to go through the whole manuscript circling and underlining in your chosen colors each time there is an opportunity to enhance your scenes in one of these ways.

After you have filled the hard copy with your notes (good job, mentor!), you get to go back to the electronic copy and do the even harder work (you can do it, mentee!).

[More Chocolate. Or whatever your emotional release involves. (I don’t want to know.)]

4) Better Line-Edits?

Actually, I’m not sure how you detach yourself from this. Just read through your document at this point and edit until it’s no longer improving anything. I read a blog at WriteOnCon by Kaylynn Flanders that suggested the mantra “don’t be lazy.” In other words, don’t pick the easy phrase or the obvious word choice. Choose what best reflects your character or your own unique voice. This also might be a good place to send the MS out to your most detail-oriented beta reader to get their suggestions too (then you return the favor!). It’s up to you whether you tell them you are outsourcing mentor duties to them.

Are we at glittering rainbow of genius stage? Who knows? Could a mentor do more? Enh, maybe a really good one. But your manuscript is definitely MUCH better at this point and you did a lot of it yourself. Kudos, brave warrior!

Also, while copy-editing would generally be the next step, I don’t feel like that’s in a mentor’s domain, so just download a checklist and figure it out like the rest of us.

At this point, you have pretty much reached self-actualization. You have your own cheerleading squad, an enviable level of insider intel, a brain full of craft knowledge, and a shiny manuscript. Who’s the mentor now, baby? If you have any energy remaining, I recommend running to the top of the steps at that museum in Philadelphia and posing like Rocky. Then, go get yourself an agent.

Or a mentor. I’d probably still take a mentor.

About Melissa Jenson:

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Melissa Jenson is a writer of middle grade speculative and contemporary fiction. She's also been a technical writer, a composition instructor, and a park ranger. An avid fan of rock guitar, she is plodding her way through a project to record herself playing/singing one song released during each year of her life.

Her writing skills were honed at Colorado State University, where she earned an MFA, but her home is in Virginia with her husband and three kids who provide enough inspiration to fill a very large dungeon. She is currently seeking representation. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaSDavies

*This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a book through this page, I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. I’d never promote something I didn’t love.

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