My experience as an ASA/CA Award Mentorship mentee

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

The email came through the day my siblings and I scattered our mother’s ashes.

I hadn’t expected it. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure the Australian Society of Authors had even received my submission. There’d been no confirmation. No contact. Yet there it was, sitting in my inbox when I woke up. The “Congratulations!” email.

And all I could think about was how I’d have to say goodbye to my mum that afternoon.

It’s an odd thing, when one of the worst days of your life and one of the best collide. To finally receive recognition for something you’ve been working on for years, but to simultaneously be confronted with a plastic container filled with a parent’s remains… It felt cruel. Something amazing had happened—something my mum would have been proud of—and she’d never know.

Needless to say, I was a wreck.

I still don’t know how I managed to reply to the “Congratulations!” email, or pick the mentor I’d be working with that year. For months, I found it hard to think, let alone write. I wasn’t able to be as proactive as I would have liked in the early stages of my mentorship, but I followed the Pathways to Publishing sessions held by the ASA, taking notes, saving the slides.

It got better. In August, my mentor sent over the notes he’d made on my manuscript. He was also kind enough to organise a Zoom call with me, even though he was in the middle of a promotional tour. The time we spent discussing my manuscript was eye-opening. Working with beta readers and critique partners is always a great help, but to brainstorm ideas with an experienced author is another story entirely. I left the call buzzing. Where I had felt stuck, my mentor opened up new paths. He suggested changes nobody else had before.

I dived into my next round of edits with enthusiasm.

When I’d finished, my mentor offered to read the new chapters and sections to check they were working. By the end of my mentorship year, I had a manuscript I thought I could query (the first of six I’d written!) and a more in-depth knowledge about the Australian publishing landscape. What the program gave me more than anything, however, was confidence. Confidence people might want to read my words. Confidence life still had something good to throw at me.

For anyone on the fence about applying for an ASA/CA Award Mentorship, I can only say this: go for it! At the risk of sounding cliché, you never know what might happen if you don’t put yourself out there. I nearly shied away from applying, but it ended up being one of the best things I’ve ever done. It might be one of the best things you end up doing, too.

A heartfelt thank you to my mentor, the staff at the ASA and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund for everything you did for me. The program has been invaluable to my development as a fledgling writer.

Mum and I dressing up in Victorian clothing at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, 2019.