Amateur Author vs. Shovelware: What I’d like to see most in a writer mentoring service

Recently, a professional author asked me what I’d like to see from a writer mentoring service, and it got me thinking about what I’d hoped to find in online writing circles in the first place.

Maybe I shouldn’t have come into it with expectations.

I’d hoped to find communities that love the craft of writing and love to talk about it. Communities that share tips and tricks, and elevate and encourage each other, and form groups to write, edit, do critique exchanges, and give honest feedback.

And you could find that pre-2008. Back in the forum days.

But nowadays I find passionate groups of entrepreneurs who mostly want to advertise themselves, talk about politics, and complain about modern day pop culture. And it’s okay to do that sometimes. But all the time? …I suppose hyperbole does get engagement.

Tips and tricks are sometimes shared, but there’s usually some catch involved. Maybe you have to click a clickbait article, or the advice is paywalled behind some private recurring subscription.

And it’s not their fault; Social media algorithms have conditioned indie writers to become habitual salesmen. Many are their own editors, rushing out books at breakneck speeds accompanied by outrageous taglines that their books can’t possibly live up to. It amounts to false promises that end up doing more harm to the indie scene than good.

Twitter/X writing circles can sometimes feel like you’re in the center of a used car lot being accosted from every angle.

Authors like this aren’t “taking back the culture”, they’re simply putting out Product for you to consume. And these products will not stand the test of time.

Perhaps that’s the biggest tragedy of the modern tech-driven writing world: passion projects get drowned in this ocean of mediocrity.

Compounding the issue further, readers are afraid to leave honest feedback on Amazon for fear of getting a scarlet letter. Make no mistake–prima donna writers regularly put readers on blast for 1-star reviews. So everybody–for the most part–gets and gives five stars. This creates a stilted environment where no one learns what they’re doing wrong or how to improve, and the art of storytelling gets progressively worse over time.

Every once in a while, a breakout killer indie book comes along to prove the above wrong. But they are the exception to the rule. You have to wade through a lot of slop to find a single diamond.

There’s also an unspoken division line between those who are published and unpublished. Unpublished writers are going to have a much harder time getting short stories into magazines because they don’t bring name recognition to the cover, for instance.

And so this is what the scene looks like from the outside looking in. Writers who want to talk about writing will have a hard time finding meaningful discussions without a catch. They’ll have a hard time finding a writing community without ponying up cash, and there’s constant pressure to compromise and give into the salesman mentality.

Not to mention the loneliness. “Social Media” is ironically parasocial in nature.

So what unpublished authors like me want in a mentoring service is writing analysis, accountability/deadlines, and the ability to experience what the internet can no longer seem to offer new authors: camaraderie.

Of course, a real sense of camaraderie is difficult to achieve when there’s money involved, making it feel more like a business arrangement, anything but organic. So I still hold out hope that I may one day find such a community. Perhaps there’s a local writing group I can join in my new town.