Showing the way

I had been planning to write this week's post about the role of mentorship in writing, but I got a bit stuck wondering how much mentorship writers actually get. The process of writing is so often conceptualised as being a solo pursuit that I suspect a lot of writers feel like they need to do all of their learning on their own; although other writers or experts may be useful sounding boards at times, they aren't considered fonts of wisdom in the way a mentor would be. Perhaps it's far easier for us to slog away in isolation than to ask for help, or perhaps there is a large proportion of us (myself included) who just have a stubborn independent streak and don't like being told how to work.

It's also a community which doesn't lend itself so much to finding someone specific to mentor you—or be mentored by you—compared to, say, theatre, which is communal by its nature and often throws together people of varying experience levels. It didn't take long for me to get pulled under the wing of a more experienced actor and director when I started getting involved with theatre, and I learned a lot from him over the 7 shows we've done together. Yet, without that collaborative element, writers are far less able to fall into mentorship so easily, or so naturally.