It’s very easy to get lost in the writing process. There are obstacles and difficulties at every stage, whether in trying to find that initial kernel of inspiration, or in trying to grow and develop an idea into something more substantial over a long period of time, or in pushing through those final editorial stages to bring a project to completion. The main benefit of one-on-one support is that you have someone in your corner throughout the entire writing process, someone who will encourage and push you towards your goal, and someone who has overcome similar obstacles in their own writing life and who therefore has useful skills and experience to pass on.

There is also something special that happens when we write with the knowledge that someone else is going to read our work. We are no longer on our own, writing into a void. As such, the writing becomes part of a wider conversation; it opens out. An experienced mentor knows what questions to ask and what prompts to give to help the writer develop their project. They are used to reading rough work, where ideas and possibilities may be hidden. An experienced mentor knows how to tease out those possibilities.

It’s not always easy to trust our instincts as a writer. Self-doubt and lack of confidence, as well as a lack of experience, can make us think we’re not working in the way we should. We often compare our writing and our approach to that of other writers. This is something that one-on-one mentoring support can really help with. An experienced mentor will demystify the writing process and suggest techniques to help the writer develop in a way that is appropriate for them. In essence, a mentoring relationship gives writers the confidence to understand what makes their writing unique and gives them the tools to put that confidence to use.

I have been extremely lucky in benefiting from the support of numerous writers throughout my career so far. Some mentors have taken the form of creative writing tutors on courses I have taken. Some I have met through winning fellowships and awards. Some have been writers who I have met at festivals and writing events.

Each of these mentors has had a profound effect on my development as a writer by giving me encouragement and cheering me on, but the two that stand out are Jean McNeil, who I worked with after winning a Charles Pick Writing Fellowship, and Cathi Unsworth, who I worked with after winning an Escalator Fellowship.

Jean and Cathi were galvanising from the very beginning, making it clear that they were in my corner and committed to helping me develop and finish my novel, which would eventually become my debut, Everyone is Watching. They went above and beyond my expectations, reading long and roughly written extracts. Jean and Cathi saw beyond the mess and helped me to identify and then tease out the central themes and style of the work. Every time I wavered, losing confidence, they pulled me back. I lost my squeamishness about early drafts because of them, and I became more confident and more ambitious about my ideas. I realised that my working process, which up until then I had suspected was too chaotic, was in fact crucial to my thinking. Their professional advice helped me find my brilliant agent, Sophie Lambert, who in turn has become another mentor for me.

Mentoring relationships are commonly recognised in certain industries, such as business, law, and politics, but the received stereotypical perception of a writer working in the field is one of a person sitting alone in a room. That’s doing it the hard way. One-to-one mentorship opens the door to that room. It turns that room into a different kind of space, into a relaxed environment in which a writer can talk about and experiment with ideas, approaches, and techniques, and with the encouragement and support to help them reach their goals.

The thing that unites all the mentors I have worked with is the permission they have given me to work in a way that is uniquely my own, and on projects that only I can write. They have encouraged me to be brave and to keep going when things have been tough. They have pointed out qualities in my work that I have not previously recognised, and this has fed directly back into my writing. A good mentor is someone who does not tell the writer which way to go but helps them to discover and navigate that path themselves. Every mentor I have worked with has done this for me, and this is something I try to do for all the writers I work with. Ideally, by the end of a mentorship, the writer has not only completed the work they set out to do but has also gained all the knowledge and skills they need to work on future projects.

It took me a long time to find my voice and the subjects that interested me as a writer. Part of the reason why this took so long is because I doubted my process and didn’t appreciate that writing, for me, at least, involves a series of tasks and questions. I expected to be able to jump right to the penultimate stages of line editing and polishing language without giving ideas time to grow. I was also nervous about putting too much of myself on the page or about exposing ideas that made me feel vulnerable or nervous.

Everything changed for me when I began to work on my novel, Everyone is Watching. This book taught me to break the writing process down into separate tasks. Before that moment, I had not understood the part rough writing plays in the exploration of my ideas. I tried to write perfectly immediately. I planned out all my work in advance, down to the thematic significances I wanted my stories to express. I left no space for exploration or discovery in the writing itself.

I find that lots of writers work this way when they are getting started, and often this approach hinders interesting ideas and stops the writer from writing about what truly interests them or forces them to write in a way that isn’t natural for them. This is just one example of how my direct experience shapes my work as a tutor and mentor. If a writer on one of my courses or on the mentoring programme is stuck, as I used to get stuck, I encourage them to step back, write quickly and roughly, go back to the original idea or character or theme that first caught their attention, ask them to try to connect with that initial flash of inspiration and take it from there.

I also find that writers are often squeamish about early drafts. Early drafts are full of ‘errors’ – over written passages, overblown events, clumsy writing. But these drafts can contain treasure too and numerous opportunities if we learn how to recognise them, so this is another way in which I use my practical experience as a writer to help others learn to recognise their own strengths. I encourage writers to form a positive relationship with their early drafts, to learn to think of them as the first step in a process, and to look back at their work with an eye for identifying opportunity rather than correcting mistakes. This is something that proved crucial for me as a writer and is a skill I am keen to share.

Overall, I would say that my goal as a tutor and mentor is to demystify the writing process. This is something I try to do for writers enrolled on the courses I teach and for those taking part in one-on-one mentoring.

A tutored course, such as Develop Your Fiction, which I teach for the National Centre for Writing, contains a carefully curated curriculum that aims to extend and deepen the knowledge and practice of writers with some experience of writing fiction. Each module covers a particular aspect of writing and asks writers to complete a range of exercises to help them approach different techniques in new and exciting ways. One of my goals as tutor for this course is to encourage writers to stretch themselves and to let go of any sense of preciousness about their writing. The exercises are fun and dynamic and allow writers to use their own ongoing projects as the basis for this work.

An online course has the advantage of giving each writer peer support, with fellow writers learning from one another as they upload their own work onto the online forum. The forum also gives each writer the opportunity to take part in discussions, and to share tips, techniques, and recommended reading. An online course allows writers to make connections with one another, and in all the years I have taught, each cohort has resulted in a writing group that meets and exchanges work regularly once the course is over. So, it’s a great way to meet other writers and to experiment with different writing techniques. Develop Your Fiction runs for 18 weeks. This is a short and concentrated period where writers get into the habit of writing and sharing short pieces of work. This environment helps writers build momentum and get used to meeting deadlines, which is an invaluable skill. Writers also get 1-2-1 contact with me mid-way through the course, feedback on short assignments, and ongoing support via email and the online forum.

One-to-one mentoring, like the kind I offer via The Full Story mentoring intensive, gives writers the opportunity to dive deep into a project. The submissions for mentoring are longer, with each submission allowing for up to 10,000 words each time, and the 1-2-1 contact is more extensive (we meet eight times for an hour each over the course of the year). The feedback writers receive on this programme is more detailed and includes manuscript annotations.

Mentoring uses the writer’s project as the basis for conversations and learning. The types of subjects we might discuss during the mentoring will come directly from their writing itself, rather than using a written curriculum as a starting point for conversations, and this means that the feedback and discussion are entirely geared towards the writer’s ongoing project. Often, writers use the submission deadlines as writing deadlines, which means that over the course of 12 months, a writer will write and receive feedback on 60,000 words. The mentoring runs for 12 months, which gives the writer time to explore and experiment without feeling rushed. The 12-month duration also allows for a deeper exploration of the writer’s habits and approach, which can unlock a great deal.

The Full Story mentoring intensive has been taken up by writers working across a range of genres and forms. Some writers are already published and are looking for support with subsequent projects. Some writers come to the programme with a fully drafted manuscript, and they will use the mentoring sessions to develop that draft. Some writers come to it without a specific project in mind but a feeling that they want to push themselves further with their writing. In this instance, the mentoring sessions may be guided by responses to prompts or exercises, which I set. Typically, writers use the 12-month programme to draft or complete a long-form project (novel, memoir, short story collection).

An online tutored course and mentoring can complement one another very well, and often writers who have completed an online course will continue their writing within the framework of mentoring after the course finishes.

For anyone who is not sure of which avenue is right for them, I would suggest using this as a simple guide: if you have some experience of writing and are looking to join a creative cohort of writers and you would prefer to use a curriculum as the basis for writing exercises to help you develop your writing further, then an online course might be a good place to start. If you are keen to get stuck into a particular project, whether that be an ongoing project or something entirely new, and you are prepared to work independently with the support of a mentor, then mentoring would be a good option.

A writing relationship of this kind between a writer and tutor or writer and mentor works best when both parties feel relaxed in one another’s company. The writing can’t be separated from the person, and so whether I’m teaching a course or working with a writer one-to-one, my first step is to get to know the writer better.

In the first week of the course, I meet with all the writers enrolled for a group Welcome Session. During this hour and a half, everyone has the chance to introduce themselves, talk about their writing, and write together.

With the mentoring, I meet with all writers ahead of any contracts being signed so that we can discuss the mentorship and so that writers can ask any questions they have about the programme or about me as a mentor. It’s important that the writer feels comfortable sharing their work with me, and so this preliminary session allows writers to get a sense of what I’m like as a person. We then begin the programme with a one-hour planning session where we discuss the writer’s project in more detail. By the time the writer sends me their first submission, we will likely have spoken for an hour and half, which builds a strong foundation for the year ahead.

Writers can also expect to be supported for the full duration of the course or mentorship. Writers can contact me anytime via email if they have any questions or if they get stuck. Often, a problem can be resolved with a simple writing prompt or note of encouragement, and I don’t want writers to be stuck simply because they were waiting for our next meeting to raise the issue.

Also key to my process is in giving writers a 360-degree sense of their own work. I engage critically with the writers’ work, but a key part of this involves showing writers where their writing is strong and unique to them. It can be easy to fall into the trap of reading back work with a solely critical eye – paying attention to what isn’t working or what needs fixing – but this is only half the story. Often, the way to solve an issue with a piece of writing is to learn where it is working or where it has the potential to work, and so helping writers to identify this is key to my role as a mentor.

When writers work with me, they can expect a fully focused and dedicated experience and one that considers various elements of the writing life: the writing itself, but also the writing process and problems relating to confidence.

There have been so many proud moments. Many writers I have worked with have gone on to secure places on prestigious creative writing courses, find agents and become published. Many have been short-listed for and won prizes, including the Encore Award, the East Anglian Book Award, and the V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. My proudest moments, however, are those granular achievements, realisations that, on the face of it, might not seem very dramatic but which can change a writer’s entire approach or understanding of their work. The writers I work with make these discoveries all the time, about their process or subject matter, about their early rough drafts, which in the past they may have discarded out of hand, but which, over the duration of our work together, they have begun to befriend and use.

Some of the writers I work with have previously been stuck for years. They might have spent a long time away from their writing and haven’t known how to reconnect with it. Or they might be lacking confidence or just not know how to begin. Sometimes they can’t see what might be wrong about a project, or they might just need someone to give them permission to work in a way that is useful for them. Witnessing these changes in a writer’s approach is a great privilege. Lots of writers I work with leave with a full draft of something they are proud of, but what is more important is that they have gained a new confidence in themselves as writers, and this is what will carry them forward.

I would ask the writer what kind of support they are looking for. A creative writing BA or MA can be an incredible experience (I’ve experienced both), the main benefit of which is in welcoming you into a close-knit creative community that you get to experience over a long period of time. A BA or MA will allow you to study other subjects, which will likely enrich your writing. And an accredited course also comes with a qualification at the end of it, which will help open doors professionally, either with literary agents or in the workplace.

However, not everyone wants or needs the extended curriculum that a BA or MA offers. Some writers want to refresh their writing skills and techniques or simply find out if writing is for them, in which case a short online course would work well. An online course offers peer support and a guided curriculum, as most BAs and MAs do, but has the advantage of being online, which makes it easier to access (my course brings together writers from across the world). An online course is also significantly cheaper than a BA or MA (a creative writing MA, for example, can cost over £10,000, and over £24,000 if you are an international student).

Mentoring has the advantage of allowing the writer to dedicate themselves solely to their writing project without having to study other subjects or read anyone else’s writing. Sometimes we just want to burrow down into our own work without any other distractions. The submission and meeting schedule provides the writer with a structure to work with (all submission and meeting dates are agreed in advance), but it is the writer who is in control of what form that work takes. The workshop environment of a BA and MA is intense and invigorating, and a brilliant forum for fine-tuning language and analysing text (my skills as a reader and editor have largely come directly from my experience within this kind of environment), but if what you want is time to explore and experiment with process as well as with the project itself, then mentoring might be a better option as it gives you the freedom to experiment with support but without scrutiny. Writers can submit more writing during a mentorship, up to 60,000 words over 12 months. And writers also receive eight hours of direct contact time with their mentor, which is more than most BAs and MAs typically offer. Mentoring is also a fraction of the cost of a BA or MA.

There’s no right or wrong answer here – each avenue has the potential to offer a writer development and support – it’s about finding the right path for you. I would advise any writer who is unsure about their next steps to speak to the course/mentorship organisers (including me!) who can give further advice.