For Your Information

Mike Hyatt had announced a mentoring program he is starting. You can find information about it here: http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/11/an-invitation-to-my-mentoring-group.html

I don't know enough about this to know whether I would endorse it or not, but I thought I would provide the information for anyone who might be interested. His criteria for consideration is quite selective. So you single guys out there, if you are interested, you are going to have to go find you a wife if you want to participate. But if you are married, live in the Nashville area and enjoy looking at yourself in the mirror, you might want to consider it.

10,000 Hours

Author Mary DeMuth recently wrote a guest post for Michael Hyatt’s blog titled What it Takes to Become a Master Writer. This is related to mentoring, so I thought it would be good to place the link here for people reading this blog. Go read the post and then come back her to read my take on the subject, as it relates to mentoring.

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First, let’s consider the 10,000 hours. How many hours have you practiced writing? Unlike with the mastery of a musical instrument, it’s hard to guess. I’m a pianist and I know how much time I spend sitting at the piano each week. I can average that out, multiply it by the number of years I’ve been playing and it will give me a rough idea of how much I’ve practiced, but with writing, we must count many things that include things like the time we’ve spent typing out stories, the time we spent on English homework, even the time we’ve spent daydreaming about a story we will write. All of that is required for a writer.

Mary states:

Those who write novels ask me how to deepen characterization, or create a character out of a setting, or evoke mood, or widen suspense. I usually can’t answer that. Why? Because most of what I write now is instinctive, born from years of experimentation and failure.

Consider those words for a moment. What does that mean to us in terms of mentoring? What good is a mentor that can’t tell us what we want to know? The moral to this story is that those people we might think are the ideal mentors may not be. Our natural tendency may be to seek out the most highly recognizable author in the industry, the guy with ten bestsellers to his name and multiple houses, all paid for by his writing. But though he may be able to write very well, he may not be able to explain how he did it. A better mentor is someone who isn’t that far along the path. If we want to know how to do the things Mary mentioned, we shouldn’t seek out Mary as a mentor, since she has told us she doesn’t know how to tell us those things. Instead, we should seek out an author who has less experience overall, but who has recently developed the skills we need. Such an author will be able to tell us what he did to learn that skill, what mistakes he made, etc. After we have learned that skill, it might then be time to seek out a more experienced author, like Mary, who may not be able to explain that kind of stuff, but can explain the skills she has recently developed.

Teaching and mentoring as also skills that improve with practice. While we imagine that we will always be able to explain to mentees what we have learned, if we don’t do this on a regular basis, we will forget how to explain the things we have learned to do instinctively and we will be in the same boat that Mary has found herself in.

I Want a Mentor. How Do I Find One?

You may be sold on the concept of mentoring. Having someone there to help you over some of the hurdles of the publishing industry sounds great, doesn’t it? Or maybe you know there are things you can do to help a less experienced person and you feel you could mentor someone. How do match mentees with willing mentors?

My employer has encouraged mentoring for many years. One of the things they did toward that effort was to set up a website that listed the skills of potential mentors so the potential mentees could look for a good match. Upon selecting candidates, the mentees interviewed the candidates before selecting one. But my employer is larger than some small towns and this blog is in its infancy. I can’t offer that capability.

The best way to find a mentor is to ask. But first, figure out what it is that you need help with. Do you need a better platform? Does your writing have problems? Are you struggling with public speaking when you attend an event to promote your book? Is all of this Internet based social networking flying over your head? There are any number of things that a mentor might be able to help you with. Decide on one or a small number of things and then look for someone who you know has a strength where you have a weakness. Then send that person an e-mail, expressing your need and ask if that person would be willing to be a mentor.

It’s okay to ask people you don’t know well and who may not know you at all to consider being a mentor if you think that person will be able to help you. It is an honor to be asked to be a mentor, but keep in mind that not all are willing to be mentors. Even people who are willing may already have a full compliment of mentees or there may be circumstances prevent them from saying yes. People who know you and people who are only a little farther down the publishing road than you are will be more willing to agree to a mentoring relationship than someone who is much farther down the path and doesn’t know you at all.

Don’t be creepy. If you send an e-mail and get a no back, it means no. Move on. Don’t try to change this person’s mind. Also, I hate to do this to you, but no response also means no. If you don’t get a response within a week, don’t expect one. If the person is interested, a week is plenty of time to write back with a yes or a I’ll have to think about it. No is much harder to write, so if the person is busy it might not come at all.