creative writing mentor uk

Here you'll find people and organisations offering mentoring and coaching services to writers, and details of any upcoming courses or seminars about becoming a mentor or coach.  If you would like to advertise your mentoring or coaching event/services on this page please 

• Creative Writing Programme (In-person)
• Creative Writing Programme (Online)
• The Life Writing Programme (In-person)
• Advanced Writing Workshops (In-person)
• Advanced Poetry Workshops (In-person)
• Advanced Poetry Workshops (Online)
• Creative Writing Programme (Blended)

Mentoring for Writers

The Creative Writing Programme offers mentoring for writers. If you are unable to make the weekly commitment to the Writing Programme you may want to use our mentoring service. Individual mentoring will allow you to submit prose or poetry (anything from 100 lines of poetry to a full prose manuscript) to one of our writing tutors. You will receive detailed written feedback and/or one to one discussion.

As well as the written feedback, in your follow-up meeting you will be given a critical appraisal of your work and suggestions to help develop it further. This will include responses to specific questions you may raise about the writing process plus suggestions for plotting, organising and researching, along with tips and structured exercises to help you develop characterisation, conflict and narrative drive.  You will also be given help with the more subtle aspects of the writing process like theme, structural metaphor and symbolism. You’ll also get plenty of sound advice and positive encouragement.

Your work will be closely edited and annotated before it is returned to you. This feedback will contain explanations and clarification of all comments made.

Please contact our director for further information:  [email protected]

Fees for individual mentoring:

1,000 words, written feedback and an hour’s discussion time with one of our tutors: £100 5,000 words, written feedback and an hour’s discussion time with one of our tutors: £200

10,000 words, written feedback and an hour and a half’s discussion time with one of our tutors: £300

100 lines and an hour’s discussion time: £100

200 lines and an hour’s discussion time: £200

Poetry and Prose:

One hour meeting with no advanced reading £50

If you would like a full manuscript read we will suggest a fee based on the word count and the amount of time you would like to spend working with your mentor.

Every donation directly supports writers, translators, and communities to experience the art and joy of creating with words.

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For writers.

As an organisation we strive to offer an ever-expanding range of diverse, creative opportunities for writers at all stages, to grow their practice personally or professionally.

From structured learning at our NCW Academy , including long-form courses and one-off workshops , to in-depth mentoring schemes and literary awards, our aim is both to identify and nurture new writing through a mix of free materials and paid-for experiences.

Whether you’re looking for publishing industry advice, critical feedback on your writing or simply hoping to meet others who write for pleasure and wellbeing, our programme is continually evolving to help deepen learning and increase access to new subjects, resources and networks.

TLC Free Reads

The Free Reads scheme is for low-income, early-career writers in England. Each year we partner with The Literary Consultancy and Arts Council England to offer up to 10 applicants a free opportunity to have their work assessed and reported back on by a professional.

Escalator is a talent development programme for unpublished fiction writers living in the East of England. The programme, which has a particular focus on under-represented voices, includes eight months of mentoring, training, guidance and networking for participants.

Early Career Awards

The Early Career Awards are a new form of literary prize, combining the power of awards with the unique, year-round educational programme of the National Centre for Writing. Tailored support for winners includes residency opportunities, mentoring and industry support to help them build a sustainable career.

International Literature Exchange

ILX brings literature professionals together to learn, exchange expertise and experience, devise collaborations, and build international networks. The programme is a partnership with British Council, supported by Arts Council England.

Residencies

Our year-round residency programme encompasses in-person and virtual residencies for writers and translators. We offer focused time to write and develop projects, as well as commissions and opportunities to get to know the wider literary scene in Norwich.

East Anglian Book Awards

We’ve been delighted to deliver the East Anglian Book Awards with a range of partners for over ten years. From our home in Norwich, England’s first UNESCO City of Literature, these awards showcase the strength of publishing, writing and reading across the whole of the East of England.

Listen to The Writing Life podcast

The Writing Life podcast is the podcast for anyone who writes. Every fortnight, we speak to writers and educators to help you improve your writing, from theme, structure and routine to language, character and writing specific genres.

The podcast has featured Margaret Atwood, Jackie Kay, Sara Collins, Antti Tuomainen, Val McDermid, Sarah Perry, Elif Shafak and many more!

Resources, tips and advice

Whether you’re new to writing or looking to develop your skills, we work with writers and industry experts to commission digital resources packed with useful advice, practical tips and short writing exercises.

Access them for free now.

NCW Academy

Our creative writing courses, workshops and mentoring are delivered by award-winning tutors, authors and industry experts.

Whether you’re just starting out or an experienced writer taking the next step in your career, we have a programme to provide structure and support for you to achieve your writing goals.

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Escalator helped me hugely, in that I began to think of myself as someone who could have something as audacious and swanky as a ‘writing career’. A writing life. A writing community. A writing future. It provided me with the sort of validation, support and community that is very hard to find elsewhere. I feel extremely lucky to have found it.

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How to Get Accepted by a Writing Mentorship Program

Today’s post is by writer, editor, and book coach Julie Artz ( @julieartz ).

As college tuition, including MFA programs, skyrockets and author income remains low enough that it rarely allows an author to leave their day job, more and more writers are looking for low-cost and no-cost ways to learn about the publishing industry and the craft of writing. Mentorship programs have become a popular way to gain knowledge and exposure, but as their popularity has risen, the competition has gotten tougher as well.

I was a Pitch Wars mentor for years, and a mentee myself in 2015. I also helped found my local Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) chapter’s mentorship program. So I’m both a big fan of mentorship and an experienced mentor. And although there’s no silver bullet that will guarantee your spot in a mentorship program, there are lots of things you can do to improve your chances.

Why writers benefit from mentorship

When talking with my coaching and editing clients, I often describe the writing journey as a multi-level pyramid. If you’re just getting started, you’re focused on the foundations of the craft. What is a scene? How do I structure my story? How do I build characters that come alive on the page? That’s the base of the pyramid.

Once you’ve mastered that, the next layer of the pyramid dives into the finer points of point of view, conveying emotion, and writing snappy dialogue that builds character. Only by the third layer of this pyramid do you get into using figurative language to convey theme, using rhythm to create both musicality and tension, and keeping pacing tight.

It’s likely to take more than one manuscript (or at least more than one revision pass) to move from the base level of the pyramid to its peak. And you’ve got to get to the peak before you’re ready to consider querying agents or submitting to publishers.

But a mentor can help you make the climb more quickly and efficiently by homing in on your specific needs and taking the time to understand the heart of your story.

Even once you’re ready to query, publishing can be a lonely and rejection-filled process. But having an experienced writer to guide you can reduce stress and help you navigate tricky situations with more knowledge and confidence. While professional writing organizations, writing conferences, and online webinars or courses can be a great way to gather information, one-on-one feedback will take that foundational knowledge and build upon it to take you to the next level in your writing journey. And the community that is built around these programs is worth more than any Agent Showcase could ever be.

Choose your mentor program wisely

Choosing the program that’s right for you and your work is vital to success. Not only does the program need to accept the genre, age category, and form you write, but it also needs to take place at a time of year when you have time to devote to revision.

Here is an alphabetical list of popular mentorship programs for writers and when their applications typically open:

• Author Mentor Match – AMM provides mentorship for middle grade, young adult, and select adult projects and typically opens to submissions in January each year.
• Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) – AWP’s Writer to Writer mentorship program is a members-only mentorship program. Applications are typically due by January each year.
• Latinx In Publishing – Applications for this mentorship program open in the fall and pair an unpublished/unagented Latinx writer with a published mentor.
• The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) – Many SCBWI chapters offer mentorship programs for fiction and nonfiction children’s books. There is typically a fee for the mentorship, though prices vary by program.
• We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) – WNDB’s mentorship program selects mentees from traditionally underrepresented communities. Applications will open in fall of 2021 for the 2022 program.
• Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) – WFWA’s twice annual mentorship program opens in the fall for those writing women’s fiction.
• WriteMentor – WriteMentor provides a monthly paid mentorship service, but also provides a free summer program that opens to applicants April 15-16, 2021.

I’m sure there are other great national mentorship programs I’ve missed (let us know in the comments!), and there are many local options as well, so check in with the writing organizations and libraries in your area.

Have realistic expectations of mentorship programs

Mentorship programs have recently led to several glamorous success stories, but the best way to find success in a mentorship program is to enter with realistic expectations. Many of the writers who are selected have been writing for years, are not submitting a first draft, and would have gone on to find publishing success even if they hadn’t participated in a mentorship program. If you’re working on your first novel, don’t expect a fast train to the New York Times Best Sellers list. Remember that writing pyramid? You can’t race straight to the top without mastering each step along the way.

That doesn’t mean there’s no point in applying if you’re a beginner. On the contrary, having a professional on your team going over your manuscript and providing an edit letter similar to what an eventual agent or editor will provide gives you invaluable experience. But it’s not going to turn your rough draft into a bestseller in one round of edits. What it will do is teach you skills you can apply to additional rounds of revision and future manuscripts. And if the mentorship program has any sort of agent showcase, it can get your work in front of industry professionals. If you are selected, focus on learning everything you can from the experience.

And if you’re not? There are lots of opportunities for finding critique partners and new writing friends during the Twitter chats and forums some of these mentorship programs provide. So even if you aren’t chosen, you might find a new critique partner. And that’s huge, especially during a pandemic when in-person writing events are few and far between.

Revise before you apply to a mentor program

Although learning how to revise deeply is one of the great benefits of participating in a mentorship program, do as much as you possibly can before you submit your manuscript for consideration. That means looking at plot, character arcs, tension, and pacing. If you have finished a complete draft but have a list of things you know need to be fixed, fix them before you submit if you possibly can. That will clear the low-hanging fruit and let your eventual mentor focus on the deeper issues.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in my submission inbox, especially in the speculative genres, is information dump. I don’t need to know every last detail of your mythical world to select you as my mentee, but I do need to get to know your main character enough to follow them through the whole story. If you’re not sure how to approach this issue in your writing, Susan DeFreitas’s Backstory and Exposition: 4 Key Tactics on this blog will help.

Find a beta reader to help

Sure, a mentor can provide that first set of eyes, but if you’ve already had readers, you’ll be able to get even more out of the mentorship experience. And if you already know the competition for mentors is stiff, why not put your best work forward? Beta readers or critique partners can catch plot holes, naming inconsistencies, revision artifacts, and other confusing places that your eyes might miss since you’ve read the manuscript so many times.

Do that final buff and polish

Once you have that crucial beta feedback, take another pass through the manuscript. Fix as much as you can. Sandra Wendel’s guest post on The Difference Between Line Editing, Copy Editing, and Proofreading is a great checklist. Yes, you ought to do at least a line edit before you submit. That’s not to say your manuscript will be rejected if there’s a typo, but anything you can do to make it easier to read will make it more appealing to mentors going through their slush pile.

Bonus points if you take the time to read your manuscript aloud. This is one of the best secret weapons for weeding out awkward or wordy phrases, repeated words, and unnatural sounding dialogue.

Maintain a professional presence on social media

I am not going to tell you that you have to have 10,000 followers on Twitter to get a mentor or that you can’t make a fart joke for fear of not getting selected. But I will say that I always check a prospective mentee’s profile to make sure that they aren’t being harmful or abusive online. It’s also a great way to gauge whether we’ll be a good personality fit, which is a crucial part of a successful mentor-mentee relationship. I mentor middle grade, so the well-timed fart joke is totally on-brand for me. But other mentors may feel differently.

Do your homework on mentors

While we’re talking about social media, do your research on the mentors you’re applying to work with. Do they like speculative fiction or do they only want contemporary? Do they have particular content they prefer not to mentor? Are they strong in areas where you particularly need help?

In addition to researching potential mentors, learning to read submission guidelines is a great skill to cultivate. Over fifteen percent of the writers who submitted to #TeamUnicornMojo (myself and my super-star co-mentor Jessica Vitalis ) in Pitch Wars 2020 were writing in genres clearly outside our wish list. For example, we love historical fiction, but if there’s no magic, we’re not going to pick you no matter how beautiful the manuscript is. Because we write and mentor fantasy. Historical fantasy? Bring it! Straight historical? There are other mentors who are a much better fit. Mentors provide their wish list not only to convey preferences but to let writers know the genres they’re best equipped to mentor. Sneaking a portal fantasy into a mentor’s inbox by calling it “fantasy adventure” will not help your cause.

And make sure your manuscript is in standard manuscript format (unless the mentorship’s submission guidelines specify otherwise). Standard manuscript format is:

• 12-point serif font (Times New Roman or similar)
• double spaced
• first line indent
• 1” page margins
• page break after each chapter
• space down 2-3 lines before each chapter title
• no first line indent on first line of new chapter or scene (this can be confusing, so grab a book and look at the first line of the chapter to see what I mean!)
• page number, manuscript title, and your name in the header or footer of each page

Finally, ensure your word count falls in the publishing industry’s general guidelines. Agent Jennifer Laughran wrote the definitive post at Wordcount Dracula . If you’re 1,000 words over or under, don’t sweat it. If you’ve got a 200,000-word middle grade, consider a deep edit before you submit.

Parting advice

In truth, these recommendations hold true whether you’re applying for an MFA program, hoping to secure a writing-related grant, or applying for a mentorship program. These good habits will serve you well no matter where you are in your writing journey. But if you’re really hoping to find a mentor in 2021, best get revising now so you’re ready when the submission windows open. Best of luck finding a mentor—they really can change your writing life.

Did I leave your favorite mentorship program off my list? Let us know in the comments.

Julie Artz has spent the past decade helping writers like you slay their doubt demons and get their novels and memoirs reader-ready. She’s worked with both award-winning and newer authors across the publishing spectrum from Big Five to small and university presses to indie and hybrid. She is an Author Accelerator-certified Founding Book Coach, a sought-after speaker and writing instructor, and a regular contributor to Jane Friedman, Writers Helping Writers, and more. Subscribe to Julie’s weekly newsletter, Wyrd Words Weekly , or learn more at julieartz.com .

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You’ve mentioned several valuable tips, especially to have a complete revised draft. In the past few years, I’ve submitted to writing mentorships and been fortunate to have two. The latest one is with Las Musas (lasmusasbooks.com) which is a selection-based mentorship program for traditionally unpublished Latinx kidlit writers and illustrators. My advice is to submit, be persistent, and keep moving forward.

Great article and resources, thank you!

I love #RevPit! ( https://reviseresub.com/ ) It just closed submissions for this year so it won’t come around until next year, but the Twitter leadup is absolutely one of the friendliest and most encouraging places for a writer on the Webs. The mentors are freelance editors, and they do market their services a little, but honestly not much, and many offer deals for anyone who submits to them and/or to RevPit and mentees whose fulls they request. (Submitting and winning are free.)

[…] Mentors are valuable for beginning writers. Julie Artz explains how to get into mentorship programs for writers. […]

Thank you for the practical tips and especially the list of mentorship programs– I knew about a few of them but others weren’t on my radar and definitely should be.

8 benefits of writing mentors for authors

Mentors are invaluable in every walk of life. Yet there’s nowhere they are more useful than in novel-writing. Learn why you should consider working with a writing mentor on your next story:

• Post author By Jordan
• 3 Comments on 8 benefits of writing mentors for authors

Writing mentors wear many hats, like the Greek Goddess Athena who disguises herself an an old tutor named ‘Mentor’ in Homer’s Odyssey . Read 8 benefits of working with a mentor, according to authors:

Writing mentors share:

Spaces for writing feedback and growth, insights that shift thinking and action, forums for breakthroughs, help establishing good process, encouragement with caveats, useful writing exercises, precise advice, guidance with the business of writing.

Let’s explore the benefits of working with mentors further:

Writing can be an isolated and isolating process.

A writing coach helps to make it more communal, with the benefit of feedback and accountability.

In writing classes and courses, and in one-on-one coaching, you learn from educators who learn, in turn, from each mentee. Nobel-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro describes the benefits of mentoring and discussion groups in The Paris Review :

I was slightly taken aback when I was accepted [into the University of East Anglia’s MFA with Malcolm Bradbury], because it suddenly became real. I thought, these writers are going to scrutinize my work and it’s going to be humiliating. Kazuo Ishiguro, interviewed by Susannah Hunnewell in The Art of Fiction No. 196, The Paris Review

Ishiguro proceeds to describe how he found, instead of a humiliation, a space for feedback and growth:

I couldn’t think of what to write next. Whereas when I wrote about Japan, something unlocked. One of the stories I showed the class was set in Nagasaki at the time the bomb dropped, and it was told from the point of view of a young woman. I got a tremendous boost to my confidence from my fellow students. They all said, This Japanese stuff is really very exciting, and you’re going places.

In Sir Terry Pratchett’s A Hat Full of Sky , a book set in his Discworld universe for younger readers, Pratchett creates a scenario that shows how mentors often catalyze new thoughts and actions:

Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, “It shouldn’t be like this.” Her mentor replies, “There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.” Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky (2004).

The focus on pragmatics – what we do when life happens, when stories happen (or cease to happen) – is true for how writing mentors help. ‘Try this’, they may say, or ‘Have you thought instead about that?’

Writers often speak about their teachers and writing mentors in terms of facilitation.

Teachers – good teachers – are often able to facilitate breakthroughs when we face an impasse.

Pat Barker describes attending a writing course where one such breakthrough occurred:

I wrote part of Union Street while I was there [at a course run by the Arvon foundation]. Toward the end of the book, where there’s the miners’ strike and the two old ladies who are on opposite sides, I wrote that there. It was part of an exercise, actually. So it was a breakthrough moment for me, but I think the Arvon courses are breakthrough moments for a lot of writers. Pat Barker, interviewed by Valerie Stivers, ‘The Art of Fiction No. 243’, The Paris Review (2018)

The breakthrough was of course Barker’s own – the collaborative, stimulating environment for discussion and writing exercises Parker describes was created by writing mentors including author and creative writing teacher Angela Carter.

FINISH YOUR BOOK IN 6 MONTHS

Stay accountable, in a structured program with writing sprints, coach Q&As, webinars and feedback in an intimate writing group.

Another thing writing mentors do is help with establishing or finessing your writing process .

Before you can whittle a manuscript into a moving, thrilling and/or hilarious story, you need a process – any process – that helps you produce material consistently.

Whether creating distraction-free writing spaces (physically or online) or providing writing plan templates or guidance, writing mentors facilitate building writing habits.

Nancy Krulik describes how a writing mentor – an elementary teacher – fostered a practice she carried with her into her adult writing life:

Miss Zuczek was the kind of teacher who set up beanbags in the back of the room where children could curl up and read when they had finished their work, surrounded by hanging plants and fish tanks. Her classroom was the first place that I discovered daily journaling, a skill that helps me with my writing to this day. She was the one who introduced me to Tolkien and Jack London, and the idea that there were amazing worlds beyond my little suburban town that I could both visit and, someday, even create. Nancy Krulik, quoted in ‘7 Authors Celebrate the Teachers They’ll Never Forget’, Brightly Editors

Another benefit of having a writing mentor is you have someone to provide encouragement, but not the uncritical or ‘telling you what you want to hear’ kind. The value of this honesty is something our mentees and alumni have mentioned when describing their experience with Now Novel . An honest educator will encourage while also issuing necessary cautions or caveats. They may help you notice particular gremlins in your writing style that recur, or warn you of the tough parts of writing professionally.

This is what Elizabeth Hardwick, founder of the New York Review of Books did for author and essayist Elizabeth Benedict:

During one meeting, I reported that a Columbia professor had encouraged me to be a writer, and I shyly asked if she agreed with him. “I think you can do the work,” [Hardwick] said kindly, “but you have to decide if you want such a hard life.” Elizabeth Benedict, “Why not say what happened?” Remembering Elizabeth Hardwick, in Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (2012), p. 14.

Since writing mentors spend their time helping authors to unlock creativity and piece together their ideas, many set writing exercises as aids toward these ends.

In Elizabeth Benedict’s compilation of authors’ words on their teachers, John Casey describes how French author Gustav Flaubert took Guy de Maupassant (regarded as one of the fathers of the modern short story) under his wing. Writes Casey:

I’ve heard that Flaubert set Maupassant a useful exercise. The two of them used to sit at an outdoor café, I think in the early evening. Lots of the same people passed by every day. Flaubert had Maupassant write one-sentence descriptions. The next day, if Flaubert picked out the right people, Maupassant got a gold star. John Casey, in Mentors, Muses and Monsters , p. 40.

A writing mentor is someone who will also offer you precise advice, specific to your challenges and intentions.

When you work with an experienced author or editor (and teacher), this advice is drawn from deep familiarity with the devices, challenges and process of writing. Alexander Chee shares precise advice he received from author Annie Dillard, which he recalled almost verbatim due to its precision:

You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in the verbs. The passive voice needs gerunds to make anything happen. But too many gerunds together on the page makes for tinnitus: Running, sitting, speaking, laughing, inginginginging. No. Don’t do it. Annie Dillard, paraphrased by Alexander Chee in Mentors, Muses and Monsters .

Another, crucial aspect of process and the writing life writing mentors may help with is the business of writing. Advice on what to send agents, for example (and what not to send, too).

Creating a business plan for your writing is another. A thorough explanation of publishing process (and its typical timelines).

In the same interview with Kazuo Ishiguro mentioned above, he describes the help author and educator Angela Carter was with the professional side of writing life:

After Malcolm Bradbury, my other important mentor was Angela Carter, who taught me a lot about the business of writing. She introduced me to Deborah Rogers, who’s still my agent today. And Angela sent my stuff to Bill Buford at Granta without telling me. There was a pay phone in the kitchen in the flat I was renting in Cardiff. One day it rang, and I thought, This is odd, the pay phone is ringing, and there was this man Bill Buford at the other end. Ishiguro, The Art of FIction No. 196.

Who is the best writing teacher you ever had, or who encouraged your passion for stories? Share in the comments below. Work with a coach in an intimate group and finish your book this year on Now Novel’s Group Coaching course.

Related Posts:

• The benefits of reading like a writer
• 8 writing tips from authors who won the Nobel
• Writing a novel: 7 tips from bestselling authors
• Tags writing mentorship , writing quotes

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

3 replies on “8 benefits of writing mentors for authors”

This was such an insightful article! I don’t have one mentor in particular (although that would be the dream) but I love drawing advice and inspiration from resources such as this

Thank you, Natasha, I’m glad you enjoyed reading this. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feedback 🙂

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Breakthrough Writers' Programme

Our exciting programme of free scholarships, courses and mentoring opportunities for under-represented writers.

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Our scholarships support writers who might not otherwise have the opportunity to attend our selective-application writing courses.

We are accepting applications for our 2024 Breakthrough Mentoring Programme for Disabled Writers. Four talented writers will receive nine months of mentoring from a published author, plus a tutorial with a literary agent.

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Meet the talented under-represented writers we've been working with through our free courses, scholarships and mentoring.

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• Our objective is to seek out talented writers, who would not otherwise have joined our creative writing courses and give them the best of our tuition and mentoring, delivered by successful author-tutors, literary agents and publishers. We will draw on our expertise to help writers maximise the potential of their works-in-progress and pitch them with confidence to the book industry.
• Types of opportunities. We run regular specialist writing courses with free places for all students involved, individualised one-to-one mentoring with published authors as well as sponsored scholarship places for under-represented writers to join our elite six- and three-month selective-entry courses.
• Who are we supporting? We hope to address many barriers to entry faced by different under-represented groups. Each writing opportunity offered has a clear eligibility focus. Some current and past focuses of the programme have included reaching out to writers of colour, disabled writers, LGBTQIA+ writers and writers with low income.
• Free for all the writers taking part. Launched in 2021 – and now in its fourth year – our programme of intensive courses and mentoring for under-represented writers is funded in full by the Curtis Brown Group and Curtis Brown’s literary agents. Many of our scholarships are funded by our valued partners – both individuals and corporate sponsors.

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Pricing & Next Steps

Our typical packages are designed to provide mentoring programmes across 3-, 6- and 12-month periods. These include at least four one-hour 'milestone' meetings accompanied by editorial reports. Working on the assumption that 30,000 words will be submitted for review, pricing begins at £1,250* but does then vary based on word count, total timespan and other variations to the service workflow agreed on a case-by-case basis with each writer.

If you'd like to discuss this further, please click 'Enquire Now' below and provide as much information as you can so that a member of the W&A Team can be in touch. Alternatively, you can reach us by email at [email protected] . We'll need information about the type of book you're writing, your total word count, an idea of when you'd like to start, and any thoughts you might have about the mentor you’d like to work with.

*All prices are inclusive of VAT

If you're not sure you're ready to commit to a Bespoke Mentoring programme, why not speak to one of our editors in person about your book? Discuss a two-page synopsis and the first 5,000 words of your manuscript in an initial hour-long consultation for just £250.

To organise a date and time for your consultation please email us at [email protected] or call on +44 (0)207 631 5985 .

Testimonials

"Alex is a skilled and empathetic editor and mentor. His knowledge of both the creative writing, and publishing process has been invaluable. He is also skilled at being able to put across complex messages with the power of good examples. It means that with his help I have developed as a writer at the same time as improving my manuscript"

"It's been a good experience working with Craig, and it's brought the novel forwards a long way. It has become a much richer book with a strong dual narrative set within contemporary themes that makes it an appealing commercial read."

"It was very useful to work with Penny Walker. Her intelligent feedback was gold for me. Thank you Penny!"

"I was most impressed by Cressi’s ability to swiftly grasp what the plot and characters needed. She treated me like an authentic novelist and gave validation to my writing. She handled my work with encouragement and professionalism."

"I fully trusted [my mentor] with my characters and their story because I knew she cared about them just as much as I did."

"I thought [Cressida’s] reports exemplary in their insight and helpfulness. I found the sharpness and constructiveness of her formal or aesthetic sense remarkable, and particularly helpful."

"As someone with no previous creative writing background and unpublished in novel writing, [my mentor] has been incredibly helpful and I have learnt a lot about the mechanics of fiction writing in such a short period."

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