When entering into a mentoring relationship, whether as a mentor or a mentee, it is essential to establish a clear understanding of what will take place. If you happen to be a bestselling author, it is best that you don’t attempt mentoring a wannabe author unless you are already a close personal friend of the author. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, since you may have your fair share of people trying to send you manuscripts to look at and such. Here’s the problem. A wannabe author will go into the mentoring relationship with the expectation that the bestselling author can wave her magic wand and solve all of her problems. Short of that, the wannabe author may want the author to edit her manuscript. The bestselling author may want the wannabe author to make changes that the wannabe is unwilling to make.
If you want to read your mentee’s manuscript and make suggestions, that is up to you, but that is not the point of a mentor/mentee relationship. Going into the relationship, the mentee should establish some goals for what he wants to accomplish during the period of the relationship. Each month, or each fortnight, the mentor should discuss with the mentee what the mentee has done to move toward those goals and make suggestions on what the mentee should do during the next month or fortnight that will help move him toward those goals.
Let’s say the mentor is a bestselling author and the mentee is a published author who has just gotten the largest contract she has ever seen. She doesn’t need someone to tell her how to write. What she needs is someone to help her through this mess of finishing the book, while meeting the increased expectations of the publisher that she will do marketing and any number of other things. The mentor can sit down with her in that situation and talk to her about avoiding the mistakes she made in the same situation. But going into that situation, both need to be clear that that is the purpose of the mentoring relationship and not something else.
y32u8wm5eb
No comments:
Post a Comment