In Today’s Journal
* Why A Mentorship?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Why A Mentorship?
I got the question within a half-hour of posting Saturday’s post: Why should I pay for a mentorship when I’m already getting so much from TNDJ on my paid or unpaid subscription?
The answer to that one is simple.
In TNDJ, I’m most often responding to my urge to pass along what I know, but without the catalyst of your questions, I’m only able to skim the surface.
When a writer emails to ask a question or questions, it stirs my brain and plumbs the depth of my experience.
My responses to those questions are a great deal more in-depth than what you usually see in any normal TNDJ post.
To see what I mean, go back and read Setting, and Characters’ Opinions, Part 1 either at the Journal website or on Substack.
Read through all four posts in that series. That’s the sort of in-depth response you’ll get from a mentorship to every question you ask.
A mentorship is $30 per month, one month minimum, and can go as long as you want it to go. And you can ask as many questions as you want.
Believe it or not, I very seldom get questions from writers. So I very seldom am spurred to write such in-depth responses (and TNDJ entries) as I wrote over the past few days in that series.
In a mentorship, you could be getting that level of instruction every day.
And all of it would be via email so you can copy and paste it into a binder or other physical form to read or re-read it whenever you want.
Also, in a mentorship I would be working one-on-one with you to improve your particular work or works, vs. speaking in general terms in an attempt to help everyone improve their work.
Of course, it’s all up to you.
If you’re just as happy remaining in Stage 1, focusing on every word and every sentence and focusing on the typing—and writing a few hundred words per hour (or less)—that’s fine. Your decision.
If you’re fine with staying at Stage 2 where you’ve finally started to become aware of Story and the fact that there’s a reader on the other side of your words, that’s also up to you.
But if you engage in a mentorship with me, you can leapfrog your skills from Stage 1 or Stage 2 all the way up to advanced Stage 3 or early Stage 4.
Up here, the air is clearer, the water isn’t so muddied, Story flows freely, and the reader gets precisely what you want him to get. I’d love to give you a concentrated, focused hand up.
Again, if you’d rather not partake of a mentorship right now, that’s all up to you. I’m fine spending my time writing fiction and teaching you what I can from the surface as it occurs to me.
I’m also fine with answering the occasional question as it comes to me via email and then using (or not) that question and my response to help teach others.
But if you’d like to rapidly improve your writing and storytelling skills, I recommend you jump on this opportunity while it’s available.
That’s as clear and up front as I can be.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “Conversation”
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 980
Writing of Blackwell Ops 49: Wesley Stark
Day 1…… 2381 words. To date…… 2381
Day 2…… 3283 words. To date…… 5664
Day 3…… 2934 words. To date…… 8598
Day 4…… 2305 words. To date…… 10903
Day 5…… 3356 words. To date…… 14259
Day 6…… 2295 words. To date…… 16554
Day 7…… 3271 words. To date…… 19825
Day 8…… 2660 words. To date…… 22485
Day 9…… 3120 words. To date…… 25605
Fiction for October………………… 49160
Fiction for 2025…………………… 627698
Nonfiction for October.…………… 13930
Nonfiction for 2025……………….. 224040
2025 consumable words………… 8441699
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 15
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 119
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 306
Short story collections……………………. 29