Finding the Right Fit
From our Arts Council supported mentoring scheme, Keely O’Shaughnessy blogs on feeling the pinch - the discomfort and joy of working with mentor Mahsuda Snaith.
Image credit: Pablo Hernandez
It’s fair to say that most writers are apprehensive when it comes to having their work critiqued. And the mentorship experience is no exception, yet working with novelist Mahsuda Snaith has been amazing, insightful and more than I’d hoped for.
To get the best out of being mentored means putting yourself out there, pushing and perhaps making yourself vulnerable. And that’s frightening.
Your writing is never going to be perfect and there will always be room for growth.
For me, embarking on the Dialect mentorship programme has been like buying a new pair of trainers. I only ever wear Converse and I usually avoid hunting for a new pair until the last possible second. Convincing myself that new and different means bad.
Stick with me here.
Even though I applied and was selected for the programme, which was a huge confidence boost, I was still incredibly daunted by the idea of sharing my writing with an accomplished author like Mahsuda.
I put off sending the first piece of writing for critique. I paced around the living room, I stressed.
What if she didn’t like it, what if she didn’t understand my style, what I was aiming at? What if we didn’t agree?
This is where shoes come in.
I know I need new trainers; mine are well-worn, some may say dirty. Yet, they’re safe and comfortable, and just like the sentences I’ve spent hours crafting, I’m attached to them. Each mark and scuff feels important.
Being a developmental editor myself, I have a pretty good understanding of how valuable feedback can be, but that still didn’t quell my own reluctance to press send.
In the shoe shop, trying on my sixth pair of trainers, I grumble about the stiffness of the canvas. The scratchiness. The too-bright look of the white soles.
This is a natural response to change, and we shouldn’t feel bad about this knee-jerk reaction. Instead, we should learn to embrace our defensiveness as part of the process and move past it to a place where we start to love our box-fresh trainers or reworked opening paragraph. To a place where we can see that the colour we worried was too bold under the shop’s strip lighting is actually our perfect new shade.
The gift of an alternative perspective is one of the many things I’ve taken from my mentorship journey so far.
Editing your own writing and learning not to be overly precious about the words you pen at the drafting stage, especially when they seem, at times, to be carved into your flesh, is so difficult. But a mentor is a guide, someone to take you into that uncomfortable space, that “hey, try this new approach” space, which allows you to see your writing from a fresh angle and helps elevate it to another level. Mentorship has been the prod I needed to regain focus with my writing.
And yes, when I finally quit being stubborn, take my shiny Converse from their box and pull them on, I realise that they are more comfortable and way cooler than my old pair, and everything is better for it.
Keely O’Shaughessy was shortlisted for Mslexia’s 2013 Memoir Competition. She has been twice shortlisted in Retreats West contests and has writing forthcoming in the 2021 National Flash Fiction Day anthology and at Ellipsis Zine. She is currently the managing editor at Flash Fiction Magazine and has also edited at 101Words. Keely is being mentored by Mahsuda Snaith. You can follow her on Twitter @KeelyO_writer
