What Is This Thing Called Mentoring?

Do a simple search of the Internet and it won't take you long to realize that there are many definitions of mentoring. Depending on who you ask, mentoring can mean anything from an adult working with a child to consulting services for hire. In the corporate world, mentoring typically means a situation in which one employee who has been with the company longer or has a higher position in the company works with a newer employee or one of lower rank. On this blog, our use of the term mentoring is much like that definition, but we focus our attention more toward writers and the publishing industry.

In mentoring, the more experienced mentor works with the less experienced mentee to help the mentee develop skills that he will need along his journey. You have no doubt heard the story of an old man who crossed a stream and once on the other side, he built a bridge. Some one asked him why he built a bridge that he would never use. His answer was that someone might follow the same path and have trouble crossing the stream. Mentoring is about building that bridge.

Corporations see the need for mentoring because they see the number of employees that will soon be leaving the company, either through retirement or through death, and mentoring offers a way to pass the experience of these workers to new employees. Most writers also see a need for mentoring, whether they realize that is what it is called or not. What writer wouldn’t want guidance from a more experienced writer? But the publishing industry doesn’t have the same structure as other kinds of businesses and we don’t see the same top down encouragement of mentoring.

Mentoring writers is not about bestselling authors telling wannabe authors how they did it. We all have strengths and weaknesses. I may know more about website development than you and you may be a bestselling author. While it would be silly for me to mentor you in how to write, I could still mentor you if you wanted to learn how to make changes to your website. Mentoring is about someone who is strong where you are weak helping you to become stronger in that area.