Mentoring, tutoring, editing
It's all a fine line.
Today I did my first session mentoring someone (we’ll call them PG) about their novel first draft. It felt surprisingly familiar, like running a one-to-one creative writing tutorial, and how lovely it was to be doing it with a native speaker (most of my university-based tutorials have been with Belgian students, who had exceptionally high levels of English but it was learnt English, not imbibed at birth). This was my first private mentoring session: it was good.
PG is writing a novel about their experiences living in a different country to their own, about tensions in a family due to emotional abuse, and wants to use a particular metaphor in the title and as a motif. I can see the value of the metaphor (it’s arresting, striking, memorable), but we got a bit sidetracked discussing the Biblical passage they were using as an epigraph. Bible passages have so many variations, and the one PG had chosen from the New English Bible was hopelessly different to the King James version. PG chose that passage because they searched the Bible for the key word and just plucked it out to use. This is not the way to find an epigraph. They want to use the metaphor due to their sentimental attachment to it from their own life, and have pitchforked the metaphor into the novel as a way of clinging to the fiction, of making their own story essential to the novel. I really hope this changes as they edit and redraft. The novel has the potential to stand on its own feet and be its own story, and should not be a prop for PG’s story, whichever way they want to tell it.
PG went away happy, with a list of tasks to do and things to look into. Perhaps they’ll get back in touch in the New Year with the first edit of the first draft. If they let me loose as an editor there’s no knowing where this novel will take me, or me the novel.
Look here if you’re interested in finding out about working with me for writing and/or publishing mentoring, or in editorial services.
