I use a coaching approach to sessions. This means you set the agenda. I take my cues from you to help you achieve clarity and make progress. The core of the work we do together is about creative stimulation and writing momentum.
Each session will include verbal feedback of material submitted in advance. I encourage you to take notes. Other than feedback, we’ll also talk about the writing life, addressing common questions about how to plan ahead, how to find a writing routine that suits your creative rhythms and lifestyle. We can also talk about agents and the complex commercial journey towards publication, including how to offer effective submissions and how to cope with rejections, a fact of all our writing lives. When relevant I’ll offer suggestions of others writers and how their work may inform yours, including books that could be useful to study for craft and genre.
We begin with a conversation about your goals: both for the specific session and for your writing ambitions more generally. We discuss your thoughts about what you’ve submitted for me to read. If a project is in an early stage we’ll talk about the ideas you’ve had and how to develop these further. We might also explore the doubts and obstacles you’ve been encountering, and the questions you have about the writing itself.
I will give you my verbal feedback as a reader. These comments are developmental and relate, in general, to structure, meaning and genre. This is not a detailed line-edit. I draw on my knowledge of craft and technique from my experience as a writer and reader. We unpick what aspects of craft will best help you achieve the impact you desire. How do you create a pacy narrative? How do you balance the first person of memoir with the themes of the project? How do you thicken plot? How do characters come to life? What are the main pivots of the novel? Is your storyworld textured and plausible?
We’ll finish by defining next steps. These might be to re-write a chapter we’ve just discussed. It could be to carry on writing the story and to revise at a later stage. You might need to do more research and a time-line before continuing with the writing. Or experiment with a new writing schedule. Or to sign up for a creative writing workshop. You might decide the story is polished enough to submit for prizes or magazines, or to send the manuscript to the industry.
Below are the mentoring options. You can pay by the session, or go for a package. As a general rule, our meetings occur monthly or every two months. A session lasts for an hour. We meet on skype or zoom. We can also agree on other schedules depending on the writing project.
We begin with a conversation about your goals: both for the specific session and for your writing ambitions more generally. We discuss your thoughts about what you’ve submitted for me to read. If a project is in an early stage we’ll talk about the ideas you’ve had and how to develop these further. We might also explore the doubts and obstacles you’ve been encountering, and the questions you have about the writing itself.
£75
5000 words
You can book one session at a time spaced out according to your own schedule.This gives you the flexibility to develop your writing project at your own pace. If you’re revising a draft, this allows you to pace the work according to specific problems. We schedule the sessions as we go and focus on the developmental steps necessary for your progress.
£75 (drops to £70 after three)
5000 words
£130
Up to 10,000 words
The focus of this session will be on what genre of book you’re writing: how you signal this to the reader in the opening; how you set up character, voice and plot. Some of the issues we'll explore will be about style (form, sentence structure); others will be about storyworld (place, context, setting). If this is memoir, does the opening give the reader a sense of being in the hands of a plausible narrator? How engaged am I? Do I want to read on?
£400 - £700
Up to 60,000 words
This is best if you have a draft manuscript and want to begin the work of revision.We’ll start with an introductory session for which I read 5000 words. If this proves useful to you, we'll continue. For each following session I read @10,000 words. The intervals between sessions will depend on whether you re-write as we go along.The feedback draws on my experience as I read: does the opening grab my attention? What signals does it send about the narration and the genre of book I’m reading? Does the plot develop in a convincing manner? Are my expectations being met or subverted? Are there lulls? Does the timeline work? Is the information about the past or the backstory in the right place for the context of the plot?
I use Skype, Zoom.
I ask for payment by bank transfer.
If you live outside the UK, I accept PayPal payments.
I ask for payment up until 48 hours before the session for the session-to-session work.
The fee is put towards the next session if you have to cancel up to that point.
Expect to pay for any cancellations within 24 hours and for sessions not attended (except, of course, when there is illness or emergency). If you are on a package, I will outline a schedule of payments when we talk.