Be your own main character
News, events, resources and opportunities
WriteMentor Picture Book and Novel Awards 2025 - open NOW (including an adult category for the first time)
Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition 2025 - deadline 2nd June.
Summer Mentoring Programme - mentors announced 24th March. Applications open 7-11th April. Mentoring begins 1st May - 30th August. More info to follow.
Success Stories
We absolutely adore sharing your good writing news, from signing with an agent, to your publishing deal, or a competition win or shortlisting - whatever it is, if you’re part of our community, and want us to shout on social media, do send florianne@write-mentor.com an email (and cc in stuart@write-mentor.com) to let us know and we will help you celebrate and share!
We’ve had so many sent in this last fortnight and it’s so nice to hear about these things! Some nice, inspirational Q&A/interviews to come in the following weeks.
Hub Calendar (all times GMT/BST
March
YA Chat Tuesday 11th 7pm with Melinda Salisbury
PB Chat Tuesday 11th 7pm with Rachael Davis
MG Chat Thursday 13th 7.30pm with Vashti Hardy
Industry Insights: Pamela Butchart on Writing LMG, Tuesday 18th March 10am
Pitch Hero: Wednesday 19th Francesca Ali from WME
Agent/Editor Q&A: Monday 24th 10am Frankie Edwards from Headline
April
YA Chat Tuesday 1st 7pm with Melinda Salisbury
ND Chat: Thursday 3rd 8pm with Emily
Hub catch up Monday 7th 8pm with Melissa
PB Chat Tuesday 8th 7pm with Rachael Davis
MG Chat Thursday 10th 7.30pm with Vashti Hardy
Industry Insights: Tuesday 22nd April 1.30pm Sara Grant on Unique Ways to Edit and Revise a novel
A full calendar is here: https://write-mentor.com/events/
All sessions are recorded and available to watch back, so don’t fret about being there ‘live’. This is just a few of the many sessions/opportunities that happen every month in the Hub and are all available on catch-up if you join now.
We’re also delighted to announce another way to connect with us and the whole community:
WriteMentor Picture Book and Novel Awards 2025
We’re open NOW (including an adult category for the first time)!
We’re so excited to see the entries coming in already! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be hearing from our literary agent judges, as well as former winners and listees on how the awards have change their writing lives.
Advice from Picture Book Category Judge Deirdre Power
Advice from Children’s Book Category Judge Christabel McKinley
Advice from Adult Category Judge Maddalena Cavaciuti
You have until the end of March 2025 to enter, so no hurry, but to help you:
Advice from past award winners
The Final Word
By Stuart White
Be your own main character
Scenario:
If you were watching a movie of your life, and you were the main character, what would the audience be screaming for you to do?
It’s an interesting exercise for us all to do from time to time. You’ll have experienced that feeling of reading a book, or watching a film/tv series and you scream at a character (in your head hopefully!) to do something you know is the right thing for them to do to change their life for the better.
It might be the person who stays in an abusive relationship, with partners or parents, it might be the person who is too afraid to take that leap and ‘cross the threshold’ (basically every story every told), but in all good stories, our characters eventually learn to do that thing that will change their lives.
But sometimes in real life, it often takes us a long time to be ready for that change, and we’ll often plod along, day after day, week after week, year after year, and suddenly that book we were working on has made little progress and months and months have passed…
No, I’m a realist and someone who has a lot of issues to deal with in my life, mostly related to physical and mental health, but also working as a teacher and raising two amazing but energetic kids, as well as helping run this community, so I can relate when people say they have no time to pursue their dream or to make the changes in their life that will allow them to pursue that dream.
And it’s why that exercise above is so interesting and useful.
It forces us to get out of our own heads and view our lives from a new, fresh perspective.
It allows us to truly see ourselves and our ‘barriers’ to achieving our dreams and making progress towards the things we really want.
It illuminates the barriers and exposes just how strong (or weak) they really are.
And here’s the thing - most of the time, those barriers, those things that are stopping us, are rarely more than small bumps in the road that, sure, cause some resistance and need some energy to get past, but we so often make those bumps into mountains in our own heads and the out-of-body experience can show us the truth.
That sometimes, we are simply getting in our own way.
That many of our obstacles are manufactured. By us.
I know that I do this regularly - maybe I’ve had a stressful day at work, and when I come home I’ve got 20 emails to reply to for WM, and I’ve got to take my kids to their clubs and get them to do homework, and give them dinner, and do the housework and washing and dishes, my wife is on night shift (or day shift for that matter - 7-730 either way, so I’m often solo), and suddenly it’s after 9pm and I’m exhausted and I tell myself the familiar tale - that I’m too tired and I deserve some time to rest, not to write my stories.
And it’s a lie. A lie born in comfort.
And I tell it over and over and over again and as time passes, I’m no closer to my dream because I’ve allowed that. I’ve chosen comfort over prioritising my dream - my writing.
Instead, in those evenings, I might spend an hour on social media or watch something or do other menial tasks.
And every time, I reflect and realise I could have done the writing.
And I know if I was watching a movie of my life right now, I’d be screaming at the television (OUT LOUD!) and telling myself to chase that dream, to priories my creativity, and to stop whispering those lies to myself and living my comfortable life.
It’s time to get outwith our comfort zone, to become the main character in our own stories, and to cross that threshold.
It’s time for change.
Writing can be lonely, but it doesn’t need to be
May the Force be with you!
Stuart, Florianne, Melissa and Emily