mentor-schmentor

Is there a pay it forward for writers—I guess really if you’re talking mentoring it’s pay it afterwards because you have already reached a milestone in your own writing … but I digress. 

Someone asked me a writing question recently…out of the blue… someone I have never met, but have e-mailed twice on a totally unrelated issue other than my or her writing. (This is not the first time it’s happened just the most recent which made my brain start a’whirlin’). As writers, published writers, do we owe it to the unpubbed masses of writers to “tell them how it’s done?” Is there an assumed level of commitment from us to help others? 

And me being me, I answered her. But what to tell this budding author? 

She writes out of my genre so I could give some quite vague and universal pointers. But I could also look up some info and point her in the right direction—which I did, I am completely anal, what can I say. But she didn’t know this about me when she wrote to ask and frankly the general vague info and the suggestion to read up in her genre would probably have sufficed.  

But really, are there other “jobs” where folks, outta the blue, contact you and ask your secrets? My BIL is an accountant and I can’t remember him ever saying he got a call from a calculator jockey asking for suggestions as to how to add better… but when you’re in the arts… Is there an implied or maybe karmic mentorship we pubbed authors need to adhere to? 

It reminded me of a few years ago: 

Back when I first got into the writing game, and by that I mean for publication vs. just writing to stop the voices (I kid, but only a little), an author who later became a friend pulled me aside, so to speak, looked over an entire manuscript I had after having read the first couple of chapters in a crit group we were both in (this is a huge group—like 50 members, not really a one-on-one type environment) and gave me some MAJOR pointers. She did a line edit as well as each and every craft point you could think of. I didn’t expect her to or ask her too for that matter. Hell, I was flattered and a little intimidated that she’d taken so much interest in me. And by golly she was right about 95 %—the other 5% is probably stubbornness/cockiness on my part. 

I have to say it helped me IMMENSELY! Were it not for her, I probably shave years off the “process”. I still think I would have gotten published eventually but it might have taken many more years, and much more rejection to get the same info she imparted me with—gee I might wanna think about thanking her sometime in a dedication of something… oopsy! 

So what do y’all think? Yes, I know I over-think things but in our world of writers and would-be authors, it’s such unusual dynamics it leaves me with these type questions floating around…