Kit, do you have other authors you feel comfortable sharing ideas and your manuscript with? I find that the difference between a mentor and a peer can be meaningful for many authors. We might defer to mentors too much, empowering them with a level of authority they might not have earned yet. While a peer "critique partner" can give a similar evaluation that you feel less beholden to. Just a thought.

Hi Kit,

I'm sorry it's taken me a bit to get back to you. There are several mentorships coming up in the new year, and I'll be sure to update you when I find out about more, but for now there's Author Mentor Match coming in Feb 2020 (this is their first year accepting adult ms) and RevPit which is between March & April.

The Science Fiction Writers of America has something on, coming around again in 2020: https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/mentoring-initiative/ . I have no experience with it.

I'm in a mentorship program now via my provincial writers' alliance (Newfoundland & Labrador), but it's not amounting to much so far (almost done month 2 of 5). I didn't have a choice of mentor (a committee matched mentors and apprentices), and I believe the mentor pool was small, perhaps not as rich as one would hope. I'm not sure I can get what I need from it, but some other apprentice might have. Honestly, the problem could be me, but I have no way to tell; my mentor is an new-ish author, not a teacher or degreed writer, and this is their first go as a mentor.

I don't know if my experience is indicative of other programs, and hope it doesn't scare you off any. If I have any advice at all, it would be to dig into how they find, qualify, and evaluate their mentors, how they match mentors and apprentices, whether there are benchmarks in the contract (there will probably be a contract), and if there's a list of past participants on both sides.