Tom Thomassen, student of The Writers Company, writes about how he gained a place on a mentorship programme after attending Exploring Fiction with Kate Worsley.
What happens when a duck gives an alien a lift in his car? What kind of car would a duck drive anyway? Where on earth are these two characters going?
These are the questions I began to answer during my initial Exploring Fiction sessions when beginning the first draft for my adventure story The Unlikely Driver.
Thanks to some great productive feedback, in a few months I had reached the point where I felt ready to submit my work to competitions and managed to gain a place on the All Stories Mentorship Programme. This scheme provides 6 months of free professional mentoring and publishing industry webinars to unpublished, underrepresented writers of children's books.
I have found that my writing process has really benefited from combining the wonderful thoughts of my All Stories mentor (the programme founder and editor, Catherine Coe) with detailed insights from everyone at Exploring Fiction. Within this I have the opportunity to see how the work I am doing with Catherine is received by other readers/writers and to further reflect on the actions of my characters. I am about to complete my first draft which is very exciting and feels like a Christmas present to myself.
Setting small weekly writing goals has had a really positive affect on my creative momentum.
I would encourage anyone in a similar position to me to write regularly and build a routine. The effort is worth it.
Thank you to everyone at All Stories and Exploring Fiction. Your support has been fantastic.
I look forward to more sessions very soon.
Happy writing and mince pies to you all.
Tom Thomasson
