colette

One of the things that sometimes comes up when talking to new writers is the question, “How do I acquire a mentor?” There’s a glazed and desperate look in the eyes of each querier, and sometimes a bit of professional jealousy, because occasionally we see people in positions where we’re not convinced they really should be, and an easy explanation is that a mentor’s personal pull helped get them there.

Well, maybe. But I don’t know that the kind of mentor people are envisioning really happens that often. They’re thinking of a wise, kindly figure who will guide their career through writing advice, secure them spots in anthologies and magazines, and make sure they appear on award ballots.

That’s pretty goddamn rare, and sometimes what one is attributing to the influence of a mentor is actually the writer’s hard work and talent for networking. And networking helps a lot — but it can’t substitute for enough skill to write at the professional level, at least in my opinion.

I do have people who have helped me along, and they’ve been great. I don’t think of any of them in this light, though. They’re people I can go to for the occasional sanity check or word of encouragement, sure. But are they out there sedulously working away on my behalf? No. They have their own careers to build, their own projects to promote, their own words to write.