Initially, before considering how to answer this question—-I hadn’t considered this question to answer. So, what changed?
The Need For Mentorship
I joined several Facebook groups for writers, aspiring writers, newbies, self-published writers—-so there’s a mix of actual samples of writings, links to books for sale, and questions about writing.
Backing up from there, the online groups, I’ve had about 20 years of teaching experience, a large portion of that teaching writing classes, creative writing, etc.. And also years of publishing everything from newsletters to comic books to magazines to chapbooks to actual full length books. So I know my way around the Writing Block.
And what I found, dipping my mental toe into the online groups, was how woefully messy so many were. From grammar to syntax to idea to presentation—-and then audaciously publishing these messes—-with pride. Some of that has to do with not having an editor but some of that has to also do with not knowing how to edit one’s self, one’s work. I was reading a lot of bad work, no, no, no, a LOT of bad work.
And that’s when I started considering the breakdown on learning how to write fiction/non-fiction and then reflecting back onto how I learned. I think that’s a point important enough to make in answering this question—-reflecting on how learning occurs.
Not whether you sell a million copies of a book—-which really isn’t the mark of a good book—-just popular and marketed well and sold—-so all the Western/White tropes of star writers—-you don’t have to mention them, they are mentioned ad nauseum as sort of a cultural cult chant and as demarcations of limited writerly awareness.
It’s like the Top 10 of the Banal.
Making those writers, popular, seem even more banal because of the audience, the millions that rave about them. To that point, it means that I can’t access those writers, to judge for myself entirely, because of the cacophony from their audience. Their audience exists because of TV and movies and video games and that wave of mediocrity that’s been digitized.
But no one is talking about Art.
Writing as Art.
Not for popularity or to market it well or to make money but to do it well as a creative endeavor. That’s why I write. I write to get better at writing, to create better word sculptures and pictures and ideas, and to capture and re-reality.
So I’m deeply interested then and have been mentored by real Artists. Those who were Artists of Teaching and those who were Literary Artists.
I was just in a discussion at a teaching position and they, management, was sniffing around me to ostensibly move me into a position of more responsibility, title, etc.. Perhaps even more money. And I politely said No, thank you. I am content in my schedule, my title, my work, my responsibilities, even my pay—-I’m not interested in “more”.
But what I realized in listening to them pontificate on why their idea was worthy, was that not everyone wants a Mercedes. I could afford a Mercedes. I could drive one. I could park one. I could gas it up. I could also be responsible for it’s outrageous repair bills/issues (my mother had one—-the bills are outrageous.). I could also expand my stress/concern to its’ “safety” when I was not directly next to it or even while driving it. Not everyone wants a Mercedes.
Not everyone wants to be a popular, lauded, selling millions of books writer and all the associated social expenses and attention that comes with that.
Some people, want to do it, writing, to create good, thoughtful, provocative, interesting Art.
My Mentors
I’ve had 6–8 of them over the past 25 years. Focused on my learning, my writing, teaching me to become a better teacher, a better writer, and how to teach writing.
Denise Donnelly, in high school writing classes taught me about dramatic construction. She wasn’t interested in my multiple mammoth manuscripts—-a legal thriller—-she pressed me for diversity. To that end she funneled me to Ann Campbell and Dr. WH Hunter—they wrangled me into the Soap Opera Club—-where we filmed a 2 hour soap opera, which I’d authored in a weekend. I brought in a hundred page screenplay after Friday’s meeting, on Monday. That turned into 200 pages. And 2 hours of scenes and eventual editing through a partnership program at Long Island University.
Ms. Campbell, surprised at my prodigiousness then taught me about dramatic writing, dialogue, capturing and codeveloping characters; even directing scenes and editing.
Dr. Hunter, through his own life story, taught me that even if it was later, I could still go to college (I finally did—like him, at 21) and most importantly he exposed me to GOOD literature, serious literature by forcing me into his AP English class—-where he taught up Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon still my favorite of her works and favorite to teach) and Oedipus by Sophocles (structure, language, idea, story, etc..) He also made me get up at 6am to tutor at 7am down the block so I’d be on time for his 8am class. (I am not a morning person—-I was often up until 4am writing……..much as I do now.)
Debbie Freeman, same high school, she worked with me on multiple manuscripts—-including the legal thriller and a short story that became a novella and eventually a published novel, Hush (shameless plug—-it is available on Amazon.) Ms. Freeman wrote extensively in the margins, notes, questions, pressures, demands—-would such and such act this way, was this possible, did this make sense?—-I still have those original print outs, those original edits. She taught me consistency in plot, narrative, characters. I wrote thousands of pages longhand and then typed them up for her (because she explained that’s what writers did.) I was often cajoled/blackmailed by Dr. Hunter against my writing classes to pass my other classes, to stay in clubs, to stay working on chapbooks. It worked.
Eventually I made my way to college, at 21 and by 22, was sniffing around for writing classes. A friend of a friend told me that I “sounded like” Professor Carlene Hatcher Polite—-I looked up her classes, open only to Juniors and Seniors—-and one had to audition with a written piece. I showed up with a duffel bag (full of binders, my writing, to “prove” that I was a serious writer, even if I was still a Freshman.) She asked was I running away from home. lol
I read a piece, inside of two different manuscripts, and got in. Because of my personal writing rule—-especially when in a competition against 50 other students during an audition—-One must cut open a vein and bleed in one’s writing.—-later I would find the Hemingway quote of how one writes—-one cuts open a vein on paper and bleeds….he was right.
She made an exception, got a departmental exception and I was in her class. Then a few months later she asked me to be the 2nd of only 1 other Teacher’s Assistants, she had in 27 years. I did it for 4 1/2 years. I managed Drop/Add, went through thousands of student assignments, bringing the best/strongest to Carlene. And I took notes and bought books she recommended. And she took me out after classes to lunch, and talked to me about books, life, sex, love, being a writer.
Having spent almost a decade in Paris, where she published her first, and only two works, where she was nominated for a Pulitzer. She read my work, appreciated some characters, talked to me about popularity and fame—-when they both came my way—-and formally introduced me to another Professor, her friend and former high school classmate, Raymond Federman.
Federman spoke in a thick French accent, in his sixties, promising that though he’d left France forty years ago, he assiduously practiced his accent. Federman was also the preeminent experimental writer—-in the world. His first mind-blowing lesson has reverberated through all of my writing for almost twenty years:
The margin, on the page, does not exist. It is a fictitious boundary.
When he said that, when he politely, plucked aside the page itself——I remember feeling undone, the way one does when a whole new concept is casually announced—-about reality.
He taught me timing, voice, the page, no boundaries, experimentation, taking narrative, linguistic and ideational risks in my work.
Then he hired me as his TA as well—-and I worked for Carlene and Federman at the same time. And they were—-Dadaism would be too limited to express the kinds of teachers they were—-Avant Garde, challenging, sporadically absent to throw me to teaching Junior/Senior level classes as a Freshman-Sophomore. Challenging me to write deeper, more, broader, wilder, and then recommending me to publishers signing off on my work, helping it get published across the country and empowering me to be a better writer.
Carlene and Federman, like Jedi Masters, both made me swear to abide by their teaching, to respect my Art, to not write pabulum——no bs romance novels, no swords and shit, no vampire crap, to not write for the dollar, for popularity, for fame—-to write as Art. To write as best as possible. To respect my hard-earned and developed talent.
I have.
I’ve been offered lots of things, including money to write bullshit—-but I attack each project, trying to find something, its’ golden nugget, a truth, a point, a new twist, a challenge for my worked talents.
Then there was Irving Feldman. I took two classes with him—-Poetry and then Prose fiction—-and we once got into a 90 minute argument, in front of the whole class, on whether my story was about Black Rage (from systemic oppression) or a Rage full father who happened to be Black. Twenty five classmates just got up and left when we entered hour 2 of our debate. He, I nominate, as my Hard Jedi Master—-who lashed me hard in my own work but privately, to other professors, praised me endlessly at how hard I worked on the projects of others and on my own. He never quite complimented me to my face. lol But I knew he liked me, my work, was pushing me to develop it harder.
One of his exercises for our 3 semester projects was to write a story with no murders, no fantasy, no sci-fi, no guns, no ghosts—-just write a story. Often when I’m scrolling through the assault of writer’s in online Groups—-I wish they would just spend a year doing that—-just writing stories, about people, or animals. Or nature. Just a day in the wild life of a rabbit.
Then I made my way a decade or so later to Columbia University and Professor Stephen Brookfield—-who actually my godmother told me about. I thought she meant another professor who happened to be like the supervising professor over the teachers cohort I was in. I kept trying to smile and befriend Professor Not Him—-but then after a semester interruption, Brookfield arrived. And it was like watching Obi Wan Kenobi TEACH.
I bought 12 of his books and had him autograph them that week and then took his classes a dozen more times over the years. When my mother was terminal and I was vacillating how to go help her down South and at the same time maintain my teaching/student responsibilities at Columbia—-he helped me figure out how to take a sabbatical. He also advised me, on top of an Everest of mentorship about teaching, that it was time to start writing up all of my class notes, videos, workshops, etc.—and my first 4 books came out in 2013—-3 non-fiction, one the first collection of short stories. He confided that he’d taken a graduate school break when his parents were terminal, and sat by their bedside, aggressively writing.
I did the same, produced another dozen or so books.
Donnelly. Freeman. Campbell. Hunter. Polite. Federman. Feldman. Brookfield…..so far.
Mentoring
I didn’t think about it while TAing for Polite and Federman. I didn’t think about what I was passively doing. I also, often standing in front of classes for weeks on end, didn’t think about how I was learning how to teach, become a teacher. I actually didn’t start teaching, directly professionally, for several years, almost a decade after TAing. Education-teaching was sort of my stumbled into career choice after Finance and Law (Securities Litigation).
As a favor to a professional friend, I took a job as a liaison at a charter school and after a couple of years there, loved the children, even taught advanced test taking strategies to them, but didn’t want to be trapped in a room with them. Perhaps older? Adults? I was coincidentally attending a men’s group, a few blocks away weekly and the facilitator offered (as I was about to leave) that I teach a workshop or two. So I did. And then he left. So I took over facilitating the group and then the Youth Coordinator left and the charter school position ended—-and I was the new Youth Coordinator within a week of the liaison position ending.
Besides assembling a working, documented program—-I really had to think about what an LGBTSGL youth, under 27 would need. What did I need when younger? I scoured books and websites and other programs and assembled materials and workshops around work, school, finances, relationships, sex, etc.. I was also still teaching the general men’s group so there came a point where I was teaching about 150–200 folk a week.
What that also entailed was I became a sounding board for their feelings, thoughts, questions, job needs, a reference—-a mentor.
That was harder because I was a Structured Mentor and more importantly, I was covering so many life areas—-I was a Jack of All Trades Mentor.
Some needed help in getting a basic job; others were college graduates in their first superstar position and needed help in how to manage and develop a department; some were homeless and turning tricks and needed blunt advice and guidelines for how to be a safe, professional sex worker; others needed relationship advice and validation in their sexuality.
I moved on from there, the clients the reason why I stayed so long at a deeply corrupt agency (they’re now defunct) and onto GMHC directly teaching computer certifications, wrapped within a vocational-mentoring program—-with a lot more resources. Working with, upon my insistence, adults from all genders, sexes, sexualities, races, etc.. Then moving on from there to Columbia, again teaching on vocational, GED/TASC and university levels ,and taking on as many young adults as I could (one of my female students, dropped off her teenage sons—tired of them, got married and moved out, leaving them homeless) to mentor.
I had to learn how to professionally mentor, which I learned from all the research, takes about 3–5 years, to enact change in a person’s life.
One of my students—-I tried to create a highway of attachment through me to and through these various programs to progress and utilize the varying/greater resources so I’ve sometimes had students follow me from program to program to program to classes to university for years (trying to get that 3–5 year mentorship infused)—-when Polite and Federman died, within months of one another——one student said to me that I was now the Mentor—-that I had graduated to the final step in Mastery—-becoming Obi Wan Kenobi.
I’ve come full circle.
To the point of a writer (teacher) needing a mentor—-yes, you do.
Can you accomplish without one? Probably not in the way you think because most people, I learned this deeply in the GMHC program, rarely get objective, learned feedback on themselves, their work. That’s mainly what I did there—besides the computer trainings—-I listened to people’s lives and told them the truth, from my own experience and knowledge. Which is kind of what all my mentors did in a distillation for me.
But what I can tell you from those clients is that most of them smart, accomplished (even a VP from a bank came to class, needing coaching, mentorship in life/career) were sort of lost within themselves, their work, their careers and the thousands of clients I’ve had over almost two decades have gone on to varying successes. I would say I’m averaging, from keeping track of folk—-about 80% success rate.
But like my mentors, sometimes I was just buying them lunch or dinner (I once took a whole class out for breakfast when the computer system went down), pushing cash into their hands, a book, encouragement, texting them some link or information, a smile, a joke, a check in about how they were, remembering their pain/feelings when no one else did—-essentially loving them in a directed way.
Does one need loving from others to became a successful writer?
Yes.
And those who don’t get it—-honestly, and I often try to “pillow” speak to folk in groups or who present work to me without previous guidance (or worse an avoidance of guidance): your work shows it.
Most people don’t learn to handle the your work is shit criticism that all of my mentors smacked me down with. But they had built me up, showed me new ways to do it, made better suggestions and insights, that by the time I got that slap down—-I was strong enough to take it.
Federman would stand in front of the room, waving my latest submission to the class, and shake his head and then say this was good, this was good, this was good but this part?—- was bad, so bad.
“You have written yet another Great American Failure….but you’re getting closer to something else.”
And he was right.
Those Without Mentors
In college, some student writers I knew deeply personally, others peripherally (I was a little unaware of the mystique being the only undergraduate TA in the SUNY system conferred upon me then), other aspiring writers scurried around Polite, Federman, Feldman. Hundreds, perhaps thousands in the handful of years I had with them.
The students would often huddle at the local coffee house—-I went there once and found it depressing and self indulgently narcissistic, and instead went out to nice restaurants with professors, and did a reading at the Buffalo Yacht Club (they were my first paid engagement after I won an award—I was recommended by a close professor friend of Polite’s. $125!!! Shut the front door!). They avoided the very churn, the Mentors, that would have gotten them to the next level and instead remained in a squalor wallow orgy with each other. Now, they’ve graduate to online groups. lol
There’s only one young lady from those days—-she really leaned into getting mentored by several other female professors—-she now teaches too—-but she’s published—-has made a good name for herself, gives back.
The others, several close friends and lovers, work at jobs (which is fine, gotta eat) but I watched them aspire and then frightened by dealing with a mentor-teacher—-dim, hide, run away, wither. They produced a lot of bullshit, failures with potential but it’s like a Rubicon you have to mettle your way though—-lots of things, becoming in life, I’ve noticed are like that.
Mentors are a level of that Rubicon.
To the group of folk who will name other writing, successful folk whom they believe didn't have mentors—-those people did/do—-editors, friends, fellow writers, teachers—-people they don’t directly mention and point out as I can with the above 8—-there are a few dozen more—like my godmother Anna, Polite's godmother, who mentored me spiritually for almost 15 years—I wrote the final draft of Hush in her dining room, helping to attend to her as she lay upstairs in her brownstone, blind, slowly dying. She’s the one who told me about Brookfield…yeah, connections upon connections upon one handing you off to another.
People mention this and that writer, as autodidactic, because it’s easier than doing the work.
- 2000 hours of writing is initially spent in a form of mimicry of the good, bad and bullshit stuff you’ve read, seen on TV, movies.
- Another 3000 hours is then spent developing your own Voice, finding your unique spin on ideas, characters, dialogue, explaining things in non-fiction, how you access the talent you’re growing, like a garden, within.
Talent is the byproduct of Work. There is no Divine, God given, lightning bolt mystical talent that comes from the fact that you’ve wiped your own ass for years.
That duffel bag that I dragged into Carlene’s class was 10,000 hours of writing by the time I was 22. A culmination of the mentors before pushing me, pressing me, allowing me, editing me, pouring into me so that I would be ready for the Olympics of Collège level Mentorship.
I didn’t even mention my grandmother, Dorothy, who read 5 books a week and when I was 10 slowly let me read her cabinet of books, which I inherited when she died, when I was 15. Domain work right there. I still push to get 5 books read a week.
- Another 5000 hours is spent in the work of writing AND mastering your domain on some level—-which is reading (for purposes of writing), twice as much as you write. I have a personal collection of about 5000 books—I have a storage room as I house hunt, NYC apartments never big enough. I’m sure I’ve had at least another 2000 books in my lifetime that are lost to the wind—-perhaps some decade I’ll try to collect them all, and then give the whole lot away.
- Then having explored the domain (Howard Gardner has written a great book on this about Freud, Picasso and others in Austria/Vienna at a particular time in the 19th century)—-you then have to be Mentored in that Domain by folk far ahead of you.
I’m closing in on 50,000 hours of combined writing/teaching—-it’s difficult to separate them now because they are symbiotic, hybrids of the other. (There are literally thousands of blogs from me online—-just writing exercise—-and that’s not counting the published short stories, articles, books—-hundreds more.)
And I will tell you, with a writing schedule outlined until 2025, with projects, numbering into the 300s for books, I see myself in only Phase 2 of perhaps 3–5 Phases of this Writing work. I have another 50 odd years to produce, I’m trying to get this load of work/ideas out of the way so that I can crack into Phase 3 and really figure out what I know, can imagine.
Long answer I know, but you’re a writer right? What the fuck else do you have to do but read about writing, learn and go apply it? Like you was out solving world peace and I took you away from that with my diatribe.
- The last 5000 hours of the ersatz 10,000 hour/Ericsson journey is spent simply doing it over and over and over and over. And over. And a few more times, and over, again. I’m better now, but I have just as many books, ideas, starts and fits, unpublished, as I have completed ideas published. I have a notebook close to 10 years old—-when I was trying to figure out how and what to blog about—-about 200 pages, 40–50 blogs, handwritten—-it’s green and beat up—-that I haven’t even typed up yet. lol
I rush out during Back to School sales and buy spiral notebooks by the hundreds! Yes, that and hundreds of pads are also in storage—-so that I can write stories, ideas, tales, essays, in them. I intermittently get a typist, an intern, a student, and give them them stuff to type or scan. Thousands of pages just waiting to be worked out or laughed at or act as the catapult or catalyst to more.
Hopefully I’ve mentored you a little here—-because when I read your stuff—-you mentor me a little—-another big mentoring influence is Peers (classmates, friends, lovers, wannabe writers) but what I learned from them positively and negatively, are different.
I have consumed my classmates/students work, diligently thought about it, marked up their pages, asked questions—-I know of the young lady who’s been successful because she contacted me years later—
”Kyle—-longshot—-do you still have a copy of that piece I shared in class? I lost it.”
Of course I did.
I don’t necessarily look to steal ideas but I look at what I cannot do, what didn’t work, what did work, how I could try to get a character, idea, situation to that point—-and then negatively—-what not to do, where not to stumble, tropes, stereotypes, mundanity, banality.
But know this, even in writing, in achieving true Art, not vomited pabulum, no one gets there alone. You just haven’t been let behind the curtain by Masters to see/meet their Mentors/Master Teachers. And because you don’t know—-you don’t know what you don’t know.
But, those who have been mentored, can see your lack of knowing in your work.
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Kyle Phoenix is a teacher, certified adult educator, sexologist, sex coach and sexuality educator with over two decades of intensive experience. He studied at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, New York University, and Columbia University. He has worked, consulted and taught individuals and focused professional developments for the CDC, Department of Education, Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York City Department of Health, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and unions. He began his career facilitating on-campus workshops addressing a wide range of sexuality and sexual health issues and then moved on to teaching at universities, non-profits, private groups and clients, hosting The Kyle Phoenix Show on television and multiple online webinars, including YouTube and Sclipo and writing extensively through his blog, Special Reports, articles and other print and E books in the Kyle Phoenix Series on relationships, finance, education, spirituality and culture. He lives in New York with his family.
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