MENTORING
NOTE: I AM FULLY BOOKED FOR MENTORING FOR THE REMAINDER OF 2023. IF YOU’D LIKE TO BE NOTIFIED WHEN BOOKINGS REOPEN, PLEASE SIGN UP HERE.
It can be incredibly tough to make your way as a writer. It doesn’t have to be, though. Mentoring can give you support, encouragement, and insight as you build confidence, resilience, and work towards finding your place within the industry.
What’s Mentoring?
A one-on-one, intensive, personally tailored mentoring experience designed to invigorate you and your writing experience over a six or twelve month period
In-text and summary feedback on your work-in-progress to keep you motivated while creating and developing your full-length project
Fast-tracked personal progress in an competitive, and at times, impersonal industry
The tools and strategies to rethink your approach to success and creativity and achieve both in a supportive, encouraging space
What, where and when?
Initial consultation (involves reading and assessment of an up to 10,000 word extract and project synopsis and in-person/Zoom initial meet-up)
One-on-one monthly meetings over the course of six months (initial consultation must be complete before booking first block of mentoring sessions)
Format – Online or face-to-face (location dependent)
Genres – novels, short stories, memoir
Submissions – Submission of stories/chapters up to 10,000 words each month for further discussion/exploration at each monthly meeting.
While mentoring with me, you will learn:
The essential components to creating compelling, sensorially immersive writing
Ways to necessarily deepen your narrative and create believable, motivated protagonists
How to ascertain what’s not working in your manuscript and why
Increased accountability and greater resilience as you regularly aim for and meet your productivity goals and move one step closer to your writing dreams
Targeted techniques to help your work get noticed, published and appreciated.
I can help you reach the next level in your writing career
With over twenty years experience writing, studying writing, teaching writing, mentoring writers and assessing their manuscripts, I’ve become something of a story mechanic.
I pull stories apart to discover what’s ‘rattling’, make observations, ask questions, and give writers tips on how to put their stories back together, only without the aspects that had originally stopped them reaching their destination. My insights have helped countless writers become published authors, and they can work for you too.
I mentor writers because I lacked that support in the earliest stages of my career. At that point, I promised myself I would help writers to gain confidence, discipline and success if I were ever in a position to do so.
To reach that level, we need to do the work. Mentoring makes that work fun. We do the work together: each month, on the page, as we strengthen your knowledge of the writing craft and help you use your intuition to develop your own path to success.
Schedule your initial consultation with me by clicking the button below.
Testimonials
What will it cost?
Initial Consultation: $ 350
(involves reading and assessment of an up to 10,000 word extract and project synopsis and in-person/Zoom initial meet-up)
Six-Month Block of Mentoring Sessions: $ 3000 (payable in monthly $500 instalments)
Twelve Month Block of Mentoring Sessions: $6000
For mentoring enquiries please contact me directly with a basic project synopsis, short bio, and some initial goals to further discuss your project.
Ready to take the next step?
Book the initial consultation and assessment of your work by clicking the button below, and we’ll get the ball rolling.
I loved my protagonist, and believed the premise behind the manuscript had potential, but I intuitively knew the pulse was When I began my mentorship with Laurie as part of the Four Centres Emerging Writers Program, I knew my manuscript wasn’t completely working, but I was at a loss on how to fix it. Laurie is a story whisperer - he understands the bones and interworking structures and systems like a surgeon knows the human body's complex muscular and skeletal systems. He didn’t just help me to improve my manuscript and to believe in the idea but, more importantly, to believe in myself as a writer and to keep going even when it felt impossible. I know I would not have achieved my writing dream - a two-book deal with Penguin Random House without Laurie’s expertise and guidance. If you don’t know what your manuscript needs or what the next step is in your writing journey, the answer is simple: you need Laurie Steed!
Emma Pignatiello, author, Last Shot and Last Breath (forthcoming), Penguin Random House Australia