Making it alone

 Word count: 324                                Reading time: 2 mins

Until I met my husband I was unaccustomed to asking for help with anything. Ever. Years together taught me to accept his assistance with challenges that I would formerly have considered mine and mine alone.  However, Alan’s not a writer so he couldn’t help much with this compulsion once it was unleashed.

Never mind, I thought. I’ll embrace the cliché; I’ll be a writer scribbling away in a small dark room with little help from the outside world. <sigh> It always amazes me that as I get older I remain chronically naïve, clueless even, about some aspects of life. When I broke out of my self-imposed isolation and started taking courses in 2009 my writing improved in leaps and bounds.

As a recent article in the New Yorker pointed out, there will be no Maxwell Perkins to encourage today’s writers to reach for the sky. The days of publishers grooming new talent are long gone. We have to find our own mentors, usually at a real financial cost. But find them we must. Just like musicians need external ears, writers need independent eyes to excel. And, as always with writing, we must remember this is a highly subjective business. The top mentors and coaches in all disciplines have blind spots. It’s up to the mentee to listen, learn, and then choose the best path. 

Case in point: the gold medal high jumper from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. If Dick Fosbury hadn’t defied his coaches, high jumpers might still be using the Straddle technique to clear the bar. He revolutionized the sport by hanging on to his vision and developing the Fosbury Flop.

Fosbury’s achievement also illustrates an irony in all this; coaches and mentors can help us reach our potential but when we jump, we jump alone.

What are the roses and thorns of working alone? Of working with a mentor or a coach? What did you look for when you chose your coach or mentor?

Comments

[Allison]

..."when we jump, we jump alone."

Writing takes bravery and it's not for the faint of heart. I do believe the right mentor can make all the difference in the world. Confidence is the key to almost anything we do. Throughout my early childhood and my teens, I was convinced I was the dumbest math student ever. I could never understand why others got it and I didn't. It wasn't until my senior hs year that I understood. That was the year Mr. Craven taught remedial algebra. I'm a visual person and when he discovered this he taught me accordingly. He encouraged me to look at math visually. It worked. For the first time I got an A. Yes, the right mentor can work miracles if you are willing.

[Maggie Bolitho]

Ah the teachers who inspired us - there's a topic for conversation.

Alexie Sherman tweeted recently that elementary school teachers should earn $250,000 a year; I couldn't agree more – and the standards for qualifying those jobs should be as exacting and challenging as for any other highly-remunerated profession like medicine or law. Because the same way great teachers open children's eyes to new worlds, poor teachers destroy the will to learn and the confidence to try.

I had an English teacher in Grade 9 whose passion and encouragement took me from an indifferent C+ average to straight A's. Many years later I wrote and thanked Peter Seale and we enjoyed a lively correspondence until he passed away in 2010.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment; it reminded me of Peter and the few other gifted teachers who guided me in ways that didn't become apparent for many years.

Maggie