Mentoring Programme

Here’s a summary of the programme:

• You sign up for a bloc of hours to be used over six or twelve months at a time.
• At the start of the programme we will, depending on the nature of your project and your needs, assign either Jo-Anne or Richard (or in some cases Michele Rowe or Fred de Vries) as your mentor.
• The programme is run through a private mentoring group on our online course platform, which is hosted by Ning. This is where you submit your writing and where Jo-Anne and Richard post their feedback.
• We use Zoom for brainstorming and the monthly group discussions and the write-ins.
• Every month you are entitled to up to two hours of your mentor’s time.
• The hours can be used in a variety of ways and depending on your needs, this will be something along these lines:
  • Written feedback: If you are working on a book, you can submit up to 5000 words of your developing manuscript per month or a total of 30000/60000 words over six/twelve months to which we will respond with detailed notes.
  • Brainstorms: You might need a brainstorm in readiness for writing your book or screenplay, or if at any stage you find yourself stuck. For accounting purposes 5000 words of narrative = 2 hours
  • You can get one-on-one help with developing character, story, or the structure of your narrative or screenplay.
  • Your monthly time might be a combination of the above – a one hour brainstorm with either Richard or Jo-Anne and a submission of 2500 words.
  • Or for complex story problems you might need a one hour brainstorm with both Jo-Anne and Richard.
  • If you’re working on a screenplay, you’ll submit scene breakdowns/scenes for feedback. In this case we won’t count words, just time.
• Depending on your skill level, there will be a preparation phase where you’ll work through our comprehensive creative writing (or screenwriting) course or, if you’ve done the course, we’ll send you our comprehensive ten-step master class to work through. This is to ensure you have the skills you’ll need to see you through your writing project.
• Before you get too far into the process, we strongly suggest you prepare by working with Jo-Anne and/or Richard on your story idea and character development.
• Your credit expires after six or twelve months. If you have any credit left over it can be carried forward if you sign up for another tranche.

In addition as a free bonus

• We invite you to join the monthly group Zoom sessions where everyone is entitled to individual time (up to half an hour) to talk through the feedback and next steps. This is always the Tuesday following your submission date at 16:00 GMT / 18:00 SAST.
• And, we offer a monthly two-hour “write-in” session in which writers on the mentorship programme are invited to work together (virtually) and discuss with us any writing problems they’re having.
• You also have the opportunity to ask Richard and Jo-Anne’s opinion on urgent problems at the monthly write-in or via the online forum.

Submission dates

• We have two submission groups and we’ll assign you to one of the groups when you start.
• Submission days are always on Tuesdays, once a month, except in October when we’re in Venice for our annual writing retreat. You are invited to make a double submission in November to make up for this and if you don’t, we simply extend your end date by a month.
• When you join, we’ll give you a list of the upcoming submission dates. It’s unlikely, but we might occasionally change these dates in which case you’ll have advance warning of this.

We ask participants to commit to:

• Reading and commenting, in a supportive way, on at least some of their colleagues’ work.
• Playing an active part on the online forum, monthly Zooms and/or write-ins.
• Taking responsibility for submitting every month
• Submitting by the deadline. The only exception is if you submit substantially more than 5000 words then you agree to submit a week before the deadline.
• Understanding that your credit expires at the end of the six/twelve month period. If you sign up for another tranche we’ll carry your credit forward.