Writers and Mentors

I don't think you can overestimate the value of a mentor, regardless of the mentee's profession. Having an expert take a novice under his wing and show him how to succeed, correcting and grooming a beginner to be excellent, is the single most valuable gift a successful professional can give.

Pat Conroy writes a great deal about his first mentor in My Reading Life: a high school English teacher who introduced him to published writers and indulged his love of Thomas Wolfe, taking the time to drive him to Wolfe's home when Conroy was sixteen. A Harvard study found that almost all successful people have four things in common; one is having a supportive family. I'm not sure a mother counts as a mentor, but Conroy's mother certainly supported him, reading to him and checking books out of the library every week for herself and each of her seven children. Having passionate readers to discuss books with kept him moving towards the writing life, knowing that others believed in him and believing himself that being a writer was a good thing.

Jack Welch says that a successful person should have a series of mentors: one for each stage because, as a person becomes excellent in one area, they need someone who's better in the next stage of their development. I suspect that once you've built a strong mentor/mentee relationship, you have the confidence to approach another possible mentor, you attract the right kind of attention more easily because of the progress you've already made, and you understand how the relationship works.

If a young writer asked me for one piece of advice, I would say, "Find a great mentor." Though reading the great writers would be second and writing every day would be equally important, I still think I'd put finding a mentor at the top since that mentor would guide both of the second two and help a writer--any writer, even one who's been writing for a while--move towards excellent in writing, reading, and discipline.