Your Mentors: Share Your Stories

[anthrodisiac]

A significant number of us have, at some point in our writing journeys, had mentor(s) who guided and shaped us. Our levels of experience, how we came to writing, whether or not we formally studied to become writers, what training we have undertaken, and how long we've been writing all play a pivotal role in who we are as writers today. But perhaps more importantly, almost all of us have had people who helped guide and nurture us and our passions — those to whom we are deeply indebted for their wisdom and patience, and who have made us better writers.

I'd love to hear who some of these influences were for you all. Who were/are those people for you? Are you still in contact with them? Do they still help you today? Were they people you actually met, authors whose books on writing helped you, or authors you took inspiration from? What wisdom has most stuck with you? At what point in your writing journey did these people come into your life?

To all those who helped us along the way, thank you.

 

[THBGato]

My wife is a massive mentor for me. She's a published novellist, so I learnt so much just seeing her process, reading early drafts and revisions, and talking through her method with her. She was a great help when I started writing here.

I learnt a lot from having BrokenSpokes and NellyMcBoatFace edit early stories of mine. We still exchange emails now and then, but I'm more comfortable asking AH regulars and my lesbian writing peer group (Redgarters, HelenL, DawnDuckie, SugarStorm) for advice. **blows kisses**

 

[StillStunned]

There have been several influences, although any mentoring on their part was passive: Ursula K. Le Guin for her plain but evocative style, Tolkien for his use of language, RE Howard for his trick of setting a vivid scene and then letting it fade into the background to focus on the action.

Here on Lit, I've probably picked up hints and tricks from a dozen or more writers, although the only specific one that comes to mind is @EmilyMiller, who stressed that female characters are more aware both of their own appearance, and of the dangers in their surroundings.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Two trusted beta readers, eight years ago, who gave advice (of sorts) as I embarked into my Arthurian myth novel for a year. When Cindy realised what I was doing, I received a string of emails with more capital letters and exclamation marks, and such enthusiasm. Enough to see me through the year, pretty much, that I took off to write that novel.

Sadly, she said her farewells a year or so ago, signing off with cancer.

Jason Clearwater, who I also co-wrote a couple of stories with, offered "editing" services. I use the word "editing" loosely - he'd change all of the novel's female characters into slim hipped young boys, each chapter, and I had to change them all back.

Jase got hounded off Lit by a bunch of fucktards, who shall remain nameless but are lower than pond scum, and I lost touch with him during the Victorian Covid lockdowns, which would have fucked with his mental health, severely.

Both angels on my shoulders, in a way.

 

[anthrodisiac]

For me, I started writing fairly young, as early as 5 or 5, but did it primarily in isolation for a long time. I created stories for myself and my brothers, reading to them, and then building out my own short stories in my teens — primarily space epics with very inhuman aliens. I started to get a bit more serious and create works I could show people, going to a screenwriting camp at UCLA and writing short screenplays, writing a play my senior year of high school, getting involved in a writing club (though it was was primarily a forum roleplaying fantasy with a few friends). I was slated to go to university for screenwriting when life nuked me and altered the course of my life about as radically as it possibly could have. And thank God, because I quickly came to learn how much I hated the rigidity of the screenwriting format.

So for a while I wrote for myself, publishing a few short stories here and there while I went to college. Nothing groundbreaking; interesting ideas, but poor execution. But in 2016 I decided to join a writers group. Everyone there was 65 or older, a couple in their 90s. They all wrote fairly normal stories: romance, autobiographies, crime thrillers, cozy mysteries, cultural literary fiction, historical fiction. And then there was me: the mid-twenties weirdo who wrote dark, humorous, "out there" sci-fi, horror, and satire. I was a diversity pick in a group of people two to three times my age.

A lot of writers groups, I've come to realize, are mostly people getting together and writing in a room, or sharing their work and having everyone clap as if it's the second coming. This wasn't that. They were savage. They had strong opinions, sharp critiques, and plenty of feedback and no real desire to be tactful — blunt, matter of fact. It was overwhelming for somebody who'd never had meaningful pushback on any writing. A few gentle nudges on my play, some friendly suggestions here and there, but substantive critiques? Not really.

While they tore my stuff apart, they never did it cruelly. The intention was always to push each other to be better, to strive for the best, to hone our craft and skill. It felt like home. We would gather and bring five pages, read it aloud, and while you read your work, everyone else was reading along with their own copy you provided (that group was probably responsible for at least a couple hundred trees' worth of deforestation over the years), writing minor notes and quick spell/grammar checks, questions, things of that nature; always quiet and respectful until you finished. Then we'd go around the table and you'd get higher-level feedback and suggestions, critiques, what they liked, what they loved, what they hated, what needed clarification. Everybody got about half an hour to read their work and get feedback.

It wasn't just my writing that improved, though, it was my ability to deconstruct, to analyze more than the content: the flow, word choice, structure, tone, pacing; things I'd thought about prior to joining the group, but never to the degree of intentionality required to provide substantive feedback and critiques. I learned more in the first three months there than I did in ten years of serious writing.

It was a wonderful four years. I loved that group, those people. But COVID hit, we tried to keep it up online, but, you know, everyone there was 65 years or older, and it fizzled out. I had another nuke dropped on me and like the group, my writing, too, fizzled out — until I started writing here a few months ago.

There are so many things I learned, it's hard to pick the ones that stand out the most. But if I were to choose one, it would be:
Voice: The narrative isn't just the narrative, it's the voice through which the story is told. It should reflect the POV of the person narrating, whether it's a first-person piece, a third-person limited, second person, or third-person omniscient. A narrator's style and word choice will change; write as the person thinks. Even an omniscient narrator has a voice, and one omniscient narrator isn't necessarily going to have the same voice as another omniscient narrator, even if the author is the same. A sci-fi omniscient narrator has a different voice than a fantasy, and those have different voices than a noir. The voice is key to immersion, especially for close-in POVs. How you choose your words, how you structure thoughts, says as much as any sentence or thought.

The other big one was:
Structure: Sentence and paragraph structure plays a role in psychological impact on the reader. Short, clipped sentences enhance tension. Long sentences put them in a more reflective state, and so is better for introspection. You can alter the interpretation of the exact same words by changing sentence and paragraph structure, not unlike how if you were to watch a movie scene and have two different soundtracks, you can elicit very different feelings from the same reel of film.

And so, so, so many more.

RBWG: miss you guys so much

 

[MrPixel]

Dr. Mark McKimmey, my HS junior year English teacher. Taught me how to compose beyond the pedantic 5-paragraph style so emphasized in the day and a whole quiver of college-level writing skills, all with humor and wit.

Wanna hear something funny? He was two years from retirement when I was in his class 55 years ago. Out of curiosity, I searched his name to find out when he had passed. What did the search find? One of those garbage "personal data" listing sites declaring his current address and that he was 117 years old. Dr. McKimmey, you got the last laugh. You truly did.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I'd also add the two massive authorial influences for me, who shaped me just as much as my writers group, if not more, given they were both at the start of my writing journey and influenced the types of stories I wrote:

First and foremost, and forever and always, Sir Terry Pratchett. The man was a genius, and I don't use the term lightly. One of the most brilliant satirists, kind and thoughtful in his satire, always finding the joy in the dark, and never forgetting that people, no matter who they are, are still people deserving of love and respect — those we call other aren't monsters, they're just other people. He helped me see a lot of the absurdity of the human condition at a time where I was doing my damnedest to understand why people did what they did because I didn't understand it at all, being on the spectrum meant social cues, interactions, none of it came natural, and I'm not sure I would've understood it to the extent I do today without Sir Pratchett. He showed those on the outside, the other, as deserving of love at a time when, as an outsider, I wasn't sure I was deserving of it.

He also instilled in me a desire to poke fun at the world, to use humor as a tool not just to amuse, but to explore, to pick at the cracks in supposedly inpenetrable truths. He's the main reason almost everything I do is infused with some degree of humor, because humor is one of the best tools to show a common humanity, and to force the reader to look at a heavier topic from a new perspective. He was a man who explored both our ugly nature, and showed us a way to move forward with kindness. Dearly loved, and dearly missed.

And 180º, Stephen King

I wrote an awful lot of horror and incredibly dark themes and topics when I first started. King modeled how to lean into the ugliness, to not turn away from darkness, but instead turn it. As an angsty teen still struggling with being a lonely outsider, it was a nice outlet to explore dark topics and lean into the strange, the alien, and the disturbing. It helped that a lot of King's protagonists were also outsiders. His works were great for showing me how to weave multiple threads together into a longer arc and not to be shy about complex interconnections. And, of course, ramp up tension, unsettle readers, and use foreshadowing.

One of the other big influences, while not a mentor, was my dear friend and beta reader who almost everything I ever wrote. While her feedback wasn't substantive, her excitement to see what I would do next provided a lot of motivation for me to keep writing when I knew a lot of it would never be read by another human being. She passed a couple months ago. Love you, goof xx

 

[anthrodisiac]

Two trusted beta readers, eight years ago, who gave advice (of sorts) as I embarked into my Arthurian myth novel for a year. When Cindy realised what I was doing, I received a string of emails with more capital letters and exclamation marks, and such enthusiasm. Enough to see me through the year, pretty much, that I took off to write that novel.

Sadly, she said her farewells a year or so ago, signing off with cancer.

Sorry for your loss, EB xx

My bestie/beta reader was very much the same for me. The level of enthusiasm for my works (even though a lot of the time it wasn't really THAT warranted ) was so helpful to keep going even though a lot of it would never see the light of day. But to have even one person read it, to tell me she cried at parts... every writer needs someone like that. She passed a couple months ago, also cancer. You and I are very lucky we had someone like that in our lives.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

My piano teacher. He was 21 and I was 15 when we met, but I didn't know he was on his way to release his first book. Back then I was writing, but it was more an exercise of throwing shit up on the wall hoping something will stick. Trends leaned heavily into Urban Fantasy, and I guess in retrospect that's when I started to have an aversion for trends. I digress. I didn't know he was an author until a few years down the line. From piano to writing. He ended up putting me on the way, and while I don't remain in contact with him anymore, I still admire him as he really shaped me in both as a music teacher and a writer. I said before he is the best teacher I've ever had, and that still holds.

My art teacher also came to this too. I started with editorial cartoons, as he is an editorial cartoonist very famous in my home city since he drew for the newspaper. From him I learned that art has no banners, art is rebellious, and it's always against everything, even the folks fighting against the system by way of replacement. Interesting times to pick up political cartoons as well; censorship didn't start to be heavy, but the seeds got planted after a rigged election from 2013. I don't have contact with him anymore, but he is still around, and is also teaching art online.

James Scott Bell's books did help me to write, especially How to Write Pulp Fiction, as it was the deep dive I needed to kick my undiagnosed ADHD's ass from back then into writing.

Speaking of pulp, there's the pulp authors. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Kindred Dick, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett... I could add H. P. Lovecraft here, but I'm not really into cosmic horror, yet I still like him.

As far as erotica goes, well, Georges Bataille, Marquis de Sade, Henry Miller, Pierre Louys, and Anaïs Nin taught me a lot. Had it not been for Marquis de Sade's Philosophy of the Boudoir or Bataille's Erotism I would be struggling on how to add social commentary and philosophy into my work. I guess my latest ex would be added here because she's the one who lead me into erotica in the first place. Before her, none of my works were erotic, but many carried the sexploitation seed.

 

[THBGato]

I wish I'd had more mentors. I've done a lot of mentoring other people professionally, but never really had one myself. One job I started gave me a mentor as part of the induction, but after two weeks he told me "I've nothing to teach you". Poor guy: he was younger than me, and I present as very confident, so I think he felt intimidated.

All through the '00s I wrote for various magazines and websites. None of my editors ever offered me feedback on my pieces. I remember once sending in a rough draft of an op-ed piece to an editor saying "let me know if you like the concept and I'll rework it." Didn't hear anything, figured he didn't like it, but then another student on ky degree course mentioned she'd read it. I was so embarrassed because it was so bad and I hadn't had the chance to redraft it.

So, if you get a mentor, hang on to them. I still get messages from former mentees who moved on to other jobs years ago asking me for advice!

 

[Erozetta]

From here, Altissimus and DEgrimwood are the only actual active mentors in my life.

In real life I didn't have the benefit of mentors, really. I had a lot of the opposite, people discouraging me from doing things I enjoyed and/or wanted to learn how to do by calling it a waste of time. About the closest I got were two teachers in middle school. English and Math. Both seemed to know I was capable of getting much higher grades and read me the riot act for half assing it at the exact level I needed to stay at the school. And the English teacher was incensed that I was acing French but maintaining a C/D in English based entirely on test scores being perfect but only counting for part of my grade. I just didn't have time at home to do homework or projects, so those got ignored and I coasted by on test scores.

There are people I've found inspiring, but they aren't active mentors.

 

[SugarStorm]

My original style probably leans very Don Rosa, of Donald Duck fame. Don Rosa’s humor is wonderfully deadpan: absurd situations played completely straight, with dry, understated moments tucked inside big adventure storytelling. (The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Eisner Award-winning, blends historical realism, adventure, humor, and some seriously heavy emotional moments.) Pratchett is another favorite.

I love how both authors use humor as a vehicle for the emotional beats. Pratchett can make you laugh and then devastate you two pages later. Rosa’s Uncle Scrooge stories shift from slapstick to genuine melancholy about ambition, loneliness, and aging. Pratchett’s almost philosophical approach to comedy, paired with Rosa’s adventure storytelling with heart is just a match made in heaven for me.

In terms of Lit, from a creative writing perspective, @THBGato has supported me since my early days here. I probably owe her several coffees at this point, so yes, I consider her my mentor

@redgarters has been amazing as a beta-reader, eternally grateful for that. Advice-wise, the @AwkwardMD @Omenainen duo has said things that continue to haunt my writing decisions.

And I’d be remiss not to mention @onehitwanda: she has a way of dropping small pieces of creative wisdom that tend to linger long after the conversation ends.

I guess there's a lot of borrowed wisdom that goes into a story of mine!

 

[onehitwanda]

I had a lot of the opposite, people discouraging me from doing things I enjoyed and/or wanted to learn how to do by calling it a waste of time.

So... dementors, then?

sorry

 

[Erozetta]

So... dementors, then?

sorry

If dementors can be code for bad parents, absolutely.