The Full Story: 12-month mentoring intensive with Megan Bradbury

Seek expert advice, tackle creative blockages and prepare your manuscript for publication

Megan is a critically acclaimed writer and author of the novel, Everyone is Watching. She is an experienced creative writing mentor and tutor, and has worked in association with Birkbeck University, the Literary Consultancy, the Ruppin Agency, Curtis Brown Creative, and the National Centre for Writing. She also has fifteen years’ experience as a bookseller. She works with long-form prose, including genre and literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and hybrid writing.

Guided by her own experience as a novelist of experimental literary fiction, Megan can help you learn how to:

Establish an effective and reliable working practice that fits around your schedule and helps you to write freely, regularly, and without pressure (but with ambition)
Research subjects and incorporate that research into your writing in ways that strengthens ideas, plots, and characters
‘See’ your own work and enhance your individual voice
Grow a long-form project from its conception to its completion

Megan’s teaching is process-led and uniquely tailored to each writer.

Megan’s 12-month mentoring intensive is £3,000. We can offer payment by instalments to help spread the cost of your online tutored course. For further information please email academy@nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk.

Start date

Custom

Location

Online

Length

12-18 months

Price

£3,000

Read Megan’s Q&A about The Full Story →

‘There’s something about Megan… She sees what others (sometimes even you) don’t see, she sets you free on your journey like no-one ever thought to, she suggests books that most mortals have never heard of, she absorbs your words where other people just read them and helps you find your way forward, doesn’t simply tell you hers, and, most importantly, she hears your voice, tells you to trust it, when everyone else always said ‘so you want to write a novel, uh-huh’. I hesitated to invest, not sure I was worth it, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat because Megan, absolutely, is worth it. 100% pure value, every which way.’

Kate McNally

‘Very few people can offer both artistic talent and considered, agile guidance. Megan is that rare thing – a highly gifted writer and a talented mentor.’

TF, Writer

‘Megan is a very generous, and skilful mentor who is really prepared to invest the time and energy to understand where you are at as a writer and where you could be in your art with the right guidance and direction. I cannot understate how valuable I found her approach and accessibility in improving my understanding of the writing process. I didn’t realise how many unintentional bad habits I had accumulated nor my lack of appreciation of the really useful techniques she introduced into my writing process. Her exercises methods and perspectives were so helpful in providing me with all the necessary tools to improve. I would have no hesitation in recommending Megan as a mentor in a world where finding help can be a lottery.’

Mike Clements

How it works

Megan will work with you over a 12-18-month period. During this time, you will meet with Megan on eight separate occasions.

1. Preliminary meeting. This is a chance for you to meet Megan, discuss your writing and decide whether you would like to proceed with the mentoring relationship.

2. Planning session. In this session, you will talk through your goals for the mentorship and agree an action plan for the coming months.

3. 6 x feedback sessions. Ahead of each feedback session, you will submit up to 10,000 words of prose, which Megan will read and critique in advance of each meeting (Megan will return this feedback to you before each session to give you the chance to consider her comments in private). The feedback you will receive will come in the form of an annotated manuscript and a summary report contextualising her comments. You will then meet with Megan for a one-hour feedback session (in person or online), where you will discuss the feedback.

4. Summary session. In this session, which comes at the end of the mentorship, you will discuss with Megan where you feel you are with your writing and make plans for what your next steps might be (such as further study/development or how you might begin to look for an agent).

How to apply

Before you embark on your mentoring journey, we ask that you send over a cover letter and an extract of your work (up to 1000 words). The cover letter should be no more than 1 page, explaining what your writing project is and why you are seeking a mentor. We recommend that writers interested in this mentoring package have already begun drafting their project. Megan will arrange a time to meet with you over the phone or Zoom to discuss your project and see how she can best support you.

Please email your cover letter and extract to academy@nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk. The team are happy to answer any questions via email or phone.

Email us

Megan Bradbury

Megan Bradbury a British writer, tutor, and mentor, and author of the critically acclaimed novel, Everyone is Watching (Picador, 2016). Described as a ‘beating heart of a novel’ by Ali Smith and ‘kaleidoscopic’ by Eimear McBride, the novel was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and was listed as one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2016. Bradbury is a graduate of the Creative Writing Prose Masters programme at the University of East Anglia, and has been awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship, an Author’s Foundation award, and numerous grants from Arts Council England. She has written for the Irish Times and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also an experienced artistic collaborator and a previous recipient of the Escalator Literature Prize. www.meganbradbury.com

What others have said

‘With Megan as my mentor I always felt encouraged, emboldened, freshly confident and understood, whilst I remained challenged, motivated and able to maintain a forward momentum; to forge my own path. Megan’s individual and personal approach always comes back to the notions of quality and integrity in my writing as fundamental. It has been a unique and deeply enriching process at a critical stage of my writing development.’

– CP, Writer

‘I hugely enjoyed working with Megan. I always looked forward to our mentoring sessions and I came away feeling positive and inspired. I certainly gained in confidence during the process of working with her. She is knowledgeable, approachable and empathetic.’

– JT, Writer

‘Working with Megan has been transformative. Megan gave me in-line and narrative comments: the detail and the bigger picture. Her feedback always got to the heart of what I needed to do in order to live up to my hopes for the novel. Megan really listens. She brings her own brilliance and experience in writing to the mentoring relationship with generosity and humour. I am profoundly grateful to have worked with her as a mentor.’

– EG, Writer

‘Throughout a really difficult year, Megan kept me writing. I am truly grateful for having such an approachable, insightful, and open-minded mentor. Her feedback was invaluable to the shape of my novel-in-progress as well as my growth as a writer.’

– MG, Writer