Here’s What Our Students Have to Say About Us:
“Thank you! Your comments are exactly what I needed to see this project in a clearer light.”
“Your reading of my work thus far has been immensely helpful and encouraging. Thanks so much for everything.”
“Your insightful responses were crucial for setting me on the right track with this project. I’m still referring to your feedback regularly as I move forward with my work. Your comments were important to me for direction, encouragement, and as a lens through which I was able to rethink my own vision. Thank you so much.”
“The process of working with your comments has helped me understand a great deal about how to approach my writing. It has changed my level of respect for the craft and the reader.”
“WOW thanks for the feedback. You’ve given me some fantastic ideas for some revisions, and exposed [some] of my big weaknesses.”
“I just reread your response and feedback. I really appreciate your insight. I have taken a few books out from the library from suggestions you made and am looking forward to working on the section you have edited…”
“I also followed your suggestion of physically seeing the world from a child’s point of view by walking around my apartment on my knees.”
“Thanks for your comments during the program and all of your patience. You’re a great mentor, a very kind guide and a ruthlessly sharp editor.”
Or How About A Blog Post in Honour of One of Our Mentors…
The Mentor
I went out and bought a mentor.
Not quite true. Actually, I rent one. I am a mentor renter.
A package deal. I submitted my application, laid down my $450, net of the ten percent early sign up discount, and joined the Booming Ground program at the University of British Columbia. So now I submit
chunks of my manuscript for review and I get feedback on my writing. I’m on a schedule to deliver.
I was a little nervous at first. It’s a long time since I went to university. I used to write in complete sentences and avoid contractions. Now, I don’t remember what dangling participles are. And some advanced degree candidate is going to correct my grammar. Oh boy!
But it hasn’t turned out that way. The mentor they assigned has enough life experience and all those technical writerly skills that it is quite an extraordinarily useful dialogue. Sure, sometimes she uses
terminology like “discourse analysis” and “disempowering” and the “reliability of the narrator”. Not to impress but because they are the efficient and precise terminology and concepts of the subject matter which is writing.
It’s like sailing. Call a halyard a halyard rather than the ropey thing you pull on to raise the sails. It’s just easier when things have a name. But it’s also like coming aboard Blackdragon where it’s OK to use terms like “kitchen” and “bathroom” rather than ”galley” and “head” because we just aren’t that uptight about proving our sailorliness. My mentor is like that.
So I’m the enthusiastic new sailor scrambling on the foredeck saying, “You did mean up here on the pointy end right?”
But the mentor’s job is not to teach or correct the grammar. It’s more like a relationship with a psychologist or a priest. She asks simple questions and I trip over myself with a long self-examining confession about one aspect or another of my writing.
Like is it really OK to be dishonest and write all these stories that appear to be clever with their double and triple meanings as long as the reader understands that it is all just in good fun, and I am just kind of throwing things over the wall without much thought because it’s really much easier to mislead and distract people than it is to express what is really on my mind? When it’s so obviously transparent, there is no true deception and the shallowness can regain its depth right? The narrator can just be a troubled man trying to appear sane without coming across a as a third-rate philosopher in training, right?
Damn. I just realized even asking such questions is dishonest because a lot of the material is actually honest , so really I’m just fishing for everybody to say, “No it’s all true and we love you.”
The real truth is I haven’t really written anything in a couple of years. Sure the sailblog contains a lot of words, but really it’s all of the fellow boater strikes whales and sinks, mom gets shot, kid shoots barracuda, dad gets bit by a sea lion type story. I never dealt with the serious issues of life. Like what does Tracey’s, “Never Give Up” tattoo really mean? And what was her thought process in choosing the wrist over the lower back?
Clearly, I can’t even help myself. I don’t know the answers to the big questions yet, but my mentor is helping me.
My intent is to rocket to the top of the creative non-fiction pediatric oncology humour genre. Maybe even a break-out book that will spill over, eclipsing the entire genre, selling more than 5 copies.
The subject matter comes from the first blog. The process is to reach into the blog parts bin, pull out the little component stories, machine them minimally, and bolt them on to the manuscript until the bigger story comes to life and walks by itself. It’s Frankenarration. Kind of fun.
I’ve already found an ending. The beginning is a bitch. Where does cancer start? Then I need to fill in all the bits in the middle. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into a monster. But we’ve dealt with those before. With professional help.
-Steve Dolling (Booming Ground Student 2010-2011)