Everyone needs guidance and encouragement to navigate a new area of expertise, forge new skills, push their creative limits, and reach their full potential as a professional. That is the job description of a mentor, someone whose hindsight can become your foresight.
Have you fantasized, at one time or another, that a successful author would take you under their wing and reveal the hidden secrets of the often-baffling publishing world? Do you long for a mentoring relationship like that of Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner, or Raymond Carver and Jay McInerney? Now you can seek your own Mentor with the augustwords.org Mentor Connection.
A mentor:
- provides personal attention.
- helps you stay motivated.
- guides you to indentify and develop your strengths.
- maintains a dialogue with you about your writing goals.
- points you in new directions.
- helps you develop your originality, individuality, and independence.
- provides perspective, focus, wisdom, support, and encouragement.
- is often the one person who keeps you going, believing in yourself.
Mentor Connection - writer to writer
Our Mentor Connection is not a cookie-cutter class, doling out blocks of information. We give you the rare opportunity to get exactly what you need in a highly-individualized, one-on-one line of communication with a Mentor you select from our group of publishing professionals. If you are accepted into the Mentor Connection as one of the limited number of Protégés, you and your Mentor email back and forth every week for six weeks. Your Mentor will use broad and detailed techniques to keep you on track, help you to challenge yourself, gain confidence, and ultimately believe in yourself like never before.
We are writers with years of experience who know there are as many questions as there are writers, such as:
- What's the secret to getting an agent?
- I'm rejected over and over and over - why?
- What innocent mistakes could I be making?
- Everyone's always talking about platform. What is it, why is it so damn important, and how do I get it?
- How do other writers work?
- How long does it take to sell a book to a publisher?
- I've written a great book. Now what?
- I should have an agent, shouldn't I? Can I sell my work without one?
- My book's available for sale online but nothing seems to be happening. Now what?
- When can I quit my day job and write fulltime?
The knowledge you gain will save you time and effort as you leapfrog professionally. With no classes to attend or software to learn, a Mentor Connection is easy and convenient. It always fits your schedule and is accessible with your laptop, tablet, or even your phone, anywhere you have an Internet connection. Giving you personal attention, your Mentor will guide you to set up a short-term career path and council you on long-term publishing directions. Your Mentor will help you open up new ideas, explore new possibilities, extend your craft, expand your professionalism, and achieve new goals. Each mentorship will deliver a completely unique experience depending on which Mentor Connection you make.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ Mark Twain