I Can Mentor Your Manuscript
Whether you’re working on the Great American Novel, a script for a low budget Hallmark Xmas movie, creating a new dystopian world or a ‘How To Be the Next Great XYZ’ manual, you are on a journey that hopes to take others on a journey. Sometimes it helps to have a guide along the way to make sure you don’t get trapped in the muddy backwaters or make too many detours.
Mentoring a manuscript obviously implies you have a completed manuscript available. Here my job will be to read and make recommendations. Essentially this is a ‘sanity check’ – whether what you’ve written works – and suggestions for areas that might need to be revisited. If that is the case I also like to start with the original synopsis to hand to map the manuscript back to as I read.
For all mentoring I work on a set reading fee based on length of the manuscript.
Where revisions are required subsequent to ‘the read’ where authors feel the need for additional advice and support, coaching is available on a discounted basis
Mentoring Part Manuscripts
As every experienced author knows, at some point in life, and often more than once, a manuscript looks up at you from the computer and says: ‘am I going anywhere?’
At this stage we writers tend to start to procrastinate and prevaricate – and I can tell you a secret about that. Prevarication and procrastination are a sign that we need help.
So I’m equally happy mentoring part manuscripts. Sometimes these sort of blocked narratives just need a little bit of a pat on the back and happily get going again. But bear in mind sometimes they need a bit of ‘tough love’ and to be consigned to a box at the very back of the creative cupboard marked ‘never to be opened’.
The important thing for every writer is to evaluate the potential and possibilities. We only have so much time available to write and we can’t afford to invest in projects that are unlikely to get anywhere. There is always the next one.