A Chain of Mentoring; and Mugging the Muse

As a writer I have a mentor, Holly Lisle. She would undoubtedly be surprised beyond words to know that I consider her my mentor, as I am mentored through her excellent web site and blog--- you may find it at Holly Lisle.com.

I recently (yesterday, I think) downloaded her free ebook Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love And Money. Among the many things I learned when reading the ebook 'cover to cover' yesterday was that she herself had a mentor, Mercedes Lackey, and Mercedes Lackey had a mentor, C. J. Cherryh. So, to the extent that I can be mentored through an ebook and a web site, I am part of a chain of mentoring, and a pretty cool one--- at least to me.

Mercedes Lackey, one of those on the chain, is one of my favorite fantasy authors, and possessor of one of the most interesting writer-names ever. (What is a Mercedes lackey? Why, the servant who takes care of your Mercedes, of course). Mercedes Lackey published her first story (or one of the first) in a Darkover anthology. Darkover is a fantasy world created by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, and MZB was very generous in helping new writers get started by editing a large number of Darkover anthologies.

I really like the idea of writer mentoring chains, and in a way that's a part of what this blog is about--- a sort of an exchange of mentoring, as I am mentored by the many writers (published and not-yet-published) on the CSFF blog tour list and elsewhere, and I try to pass the mentoring on by sharing what I have learned.

Mugging the Muse gives some very practical advice on how to become a professional writer, and how to avoid some of the mistakes she made that have had a bad impact on her career.

As a result, I've decided it's important to actually plan my writing career, and I have determined a bunch of activities which will help me to do this (not all of which I feel like sharing.)

One of the things that she mentions as being good for the career is series novels (as in MZB's Darkover series) and she gives some good advice for creating a series character you can live with.

I have decided that perhaps what I ought to do is work on an old fantasy world of mine (or a fantasy/sci-fi world, similar to Darkover in that respect) and add to it elements of other worlds I have created--- most specifically the Five Elements, a fantasy world organized around the Asian Five Elements of myth and legend. I want to put together a good solid fantasy/sci-fi world which I can use for a variety of story ideas I have had.

I also want to work on a couple of short stories. I haven't done that in a while, and I believe I have only finished about 3 short stories (5 if you count the 2True Confessions stories I wrote, of which one was published much to my embarrassment--- but I did get about $90 bucks for it.) But that is certainly more than the number of novels I've finished.

The advantage is that I can use the short stories to build my writing career and to prepare the way for my novel (assuming I finish one.)

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