Screw Mentors. Get Yourself A Benefactor.
Posted by Craig Mazin on 22 Nov 2005 at 10:48 pm | Tagged as: The Craft & Trade
Scary, yes, but
good for ya…Mentors are highly overrated. I know everyone’s supposed to have one, and everyone probably does, which is why I figure they’re overrated. I mean, think of the Great Mentored Mass out there absorbing wisdom at their masters’ knees and yet never actually succeeding.
Blame the mentor.
Mentors are wonderfully avuncular support systems. They nudge you slowly, carefully nurture your talent, pick you up when you fall and tell you confidence-restoring tales of how they once stumbled.
Meanwhile, they’re rich and successful, you’re not.
Face it. Their mentorship is probably 95% about making them feel good about themselves.
The other 5% is inefficient mollycoddling of the mentored, who would probably get a lot further with a few swift kicks to the rear.
That’s why I always say what screenwriters really need (pro or otherwise) is a benefactor.
A benefactor doesn’t give a sweet crap about your self-esteem, nor are they interested in picking you up and dusting you off. They probably like you personally, but if you got a brain tumor that killed your writing ability, it’s almost certain they’d stop calling after a few weeks. They’re too busy for encouragement, they’re too selfish to be a shoulder to cry on, and they’re way too mean to ever ever ever be avuncular.
Seriously, watch out for avuncular. Avuncular people will put the sleep of death on you.
No, benefactors are mostly interested in doing whatever the hell it is that actually needs to be done to make you better than you are now, because they’re paying you for a product.
The concept of the benefactor (or patron of the arts, if you prefer) is as old as both creativity and hunger. Artists and craftsmen have always sought the patronage of the wealthy. The wealthy, by dint of their voracious appetite for more wealth, are ambitious enough for themselves and us. That’s why the relationship is so wonderful. They give the artist a certain purpose beyond his own squirrely mind. Mozart was a genius no matter what he played, but he tended to actually get the work done when he was being ordered to.
Mentors let you get drunk and dream the day away because, in part, they honestly don’t care if you ever make it. In fact, they secretly want you to fail, which may be why they became mentors in the first place.
Benefactors dump cold water on your head and drag you to the typewriter because your lazy, writer’s blocked self-indulgent artsy-fartsy crap is getting in the way of their plans.
In its best form, the artist-patron relationship becomes stable and pleasant. Most big-time screenwriters naturally gravitate towards one or two steady patrons of their art. The patrons provide direction and purpose beyond the mere ego direction and purpose the screenwriter would rely on otherwise, and the screenwriter provides the patron with works of value and, just as importantly, style.
Consider the case of Jerry Bruckheimer. Jerry doesn’t write movies. He’s a patron. A benefactor. More to the point, he’s a steady patron of Ted and Terry’s. Beyond the money that he makes off of the movies that they write, they have added a certain sensibility and style to his oeuvre.
Yes, patrons have ouevres.
At least…the good ones do. Or try to.
My patron is Bob Weinstein. John August loves to work with Tim Burton. David Koepp works repeatedly with Spielberg. Akiva Goldsman found a patron in Brian Grazer and Imagine.
None of these writers (including me) is married to our benefactor. We all flit around here and there, but slowly and surely, like the pairing off process that happens before a prom, matches are made.
They have real staying power, and they help both parties grow as craftsmen, businessmen and entertainers.
If you’re a pro, try and find that single patron. Become a “company man” for a bit, because it will actually free you in the exact ways you might have expected it would not. You find yourself trusted. Treated like an equal. Consulted. Depended upon.
Needed.
If you’re an aspirant, ditch the kindly old man with the twinkly eyes who makes you feel warm inside after a hard day at the laptop. Find someone crazy enough to want to pay you to write. Doesn’t have to be a script. Earn some money writing anything. Learn how to work for a patron. They, and only they, can transform you into a professional writer. Everyone else is just killing time.
Your time.
You may not know about these folks but if you do.. what would you consider the Writer’s Arc fellowship (or the Nicholl for that matter) to be? A mentoring situation or a benfactor type of thing? See, they expect (demand) that you produce an actual script, and they give you money to do so… while encouraging you, but they don’t molly coddle… so I’m confused.. (again. sigh)
The Nicholls Fellowship makes you compete, then pays you.
Benefactors. Hands down.
Craig Mazin is my mentor.
I’m my own benefactor. I pay with credit.
Whoa.
As I read this latest post I couldn’t wait for the hilarious punchline that was undoubtedly going to knock my socks off–this is some funny stuff. But then I got to the last two words of the post and there wasn’t a joke in sight.
Maybe I missed something…
Nope.
Craig is serious. Now before I go on, let me just make something clear. I really love this website. It seems we share an affinity for superheroes, and I love Craig’s writing (he singlehandedly saved the Scary Movie franchise; if you don’t believe me, watch Scary Movie 2 and then watch Scary Movie 3).
But this latest post is a bit…whacky. Not funny whacky but whacky whacky.
One one hand you have Craig’s obvious distaste for Mentors and if I was Dr. Frasier Crane I would diagnose that Craig’s early mentor was a real prig. On the other hand you have Craig telling everyone that the way to get into the business so you can get paid to write is to find a Benefactor who will…pay…you…to…write.
Oh, is that all?
Finding a Benefactor is a great idea. So is winning the lottery. Do you see the problem here? Mentors, like anyone else in the world can be A-holes. But they’re also invaluable. Not because they will pay you to write. But because they will help you become a better writer. And that’s why this post is a bit whacky.
Because most writers aren’t very good.
Because all writers need to improve.
Mentors will help you stop writing your first draft like its a shooting draft. Mentors will teach you not to write a screenplay like an English textbook. Mentors will tell you that more than likely you are not going to sell your very first screenplay.
Mentors will also teach you about euphemisms. “Benefactors”, for example, is a euphemism. It’s a euphemism for an “Employer”.
Mark my words…you will never be paid–for anything–unless you learn how to write properly and creatively.
Period.
If you’re a budding screenwriter, go out and seek help from someone who is experienced and charitable. Never forget that you can and hopefully will get better at it. But if you go out and seek someone who will pay you for your work–Lord help you. You will become even more discouraged and bitter than most writers.
Mentors are invaluable, even the bad ones. Benefactors are a dream. And if you spend all of your time trying to find one…it will become a nightmare.
Huh. Odd choice of definitions, Craig.
I’d love to have a mentor. A mentor, to my mind, hires you into positions that you’re capable of, but don’t have the credits for. Throws you into the deep end, with pay. Throws you work you can handle, but no one else will give you. And then gives you the advice you need to not screw up the opportunity.
A benefactor: same, without the advice. A benefactor doesn’t necessarily know more than you, but is in a better/higher position.
I’ve had a benefactor, but I’ve never had a mentor, really. Still waiting for mine. Of course as you move up in your skills, the list of possible mentors gets shorter. I may never have one.
I try to be a mentor to my interns. I try to hand them the ball and encourage them to run with it. They don’t always get very far, but at least they know what the ball feels like, and they’ve heard the roar of the crowd.
Kevin:
Good. I’m glad you think this is whacky. You shouldn’t like everything I write.
Everyone must find that first someone to pay them, correct? Everyone! Have you been paid to write anything? And by “anything”, I mean…a paragraph, a slogan, a pamphlet…anything.
If not, then yes, try and get someone to pay you. It’s good for you. It is not a dream unless you think of it as a dream, in which case, well, it ain’t gonna happen.
Alex;
Your description of mentor (pays you) is my description of patron. Kevin’s description of mentor (teacher) is the more common one, I suspect.
I’ve never had a mentor either. Just benefactors. One reason I wrote this post was, in a sense, to intentionally cheapen the value of this very website. Reading these articles (and the ones you write and August writes and Ted and Terry write at Wordplayer) is helpful, but no where near as helpful as actually getting paid to write. That’s a transformative experience.
This, well, isn’t.
I mean, if I’m not honest on my own website, I might as well pack it in, right?
Thanks for the concise answer, Craig.
Looks like I’m in the hunt for benefactors. YeeHaw!
Craig:
Thank God I get paid to write. But it sure took a long time to get there. And of course you should aim to get paid, that is after all what makes a hobby into a career.
But the very definition of Mentor implies that you are looking for someone to “teach” you, not pay you. Mentors also imply that you are in the very early stages of screenwriting, the very reason why a Mentor is needed. If you are already being paid as a screenwriter then there’s no reason to seek out a Mentor; a Colleague would make more sense.
And if you were trying to cheapen this website by this post you didn’t succeed. It’s just a minor brain fart. And I suspect there’s something else behind this post…
I’ve decided Jeffery Katzenberg should be my benefactor.
So … who do I talk to to arrange the meeting?
Regardless of terminology, you offer sound advice Craig. I greatly appreciate what my mentors have done for me, but your latest blog made me realize it’s time to move on.
Daniel L
Is it reasonable to discern which holds more value: the benefactor or the mentor?
I say no. Maybe you’re working with a different definition of “mentor” than I am, but the one I work with would categorize Billy Wilder and Ben Hecht as “mentors.” I don’t see it as necessary for a mentor and student to know one another. I just believe instruction will suffice. And one can find the instructions in black & white on every page of the script.
For a profession that involves art and business, I couldn’t bring myself to declare that a mentor or a benefactor is more helpful. I take in their efforts and forge ahead.
But the very definition of Mentor implies that you are looking for someone to �teach� you, not pay you.
No, a teacher is someone who teaches you. You pay them money, they do their best to pass along some knowledge.
And that’s a fine thing.
A mentor is someone who volunteers wisdom and counsel.
And that would be a fine thing, if wisdom and counsel were more valuable than experience.
Which they ain’t.
men-tor n. 1. A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
Craig, you consistenly post brilliant stuff on your website, but it seems you indeed brain-farted this time.
A mentor is someone who counsels or teaches. It can be voluntary, it can be paid. An employer can be a mentor, but a mentor is not automatically an employer.
If you aim this post at working writers, then sure, an employer/benefactor is probably what you need. But, since most of your readers are not yet pros, we need people to help us get to the level where we can get work in the first place.
That person is a mentor.
You, Ted & Terry, John August, and others are mentors to many of us, because you counsel and teach. If only you’d employee us all too.
Another point to consider is that Benefactors who supported Mozart or artistic painters, ect. in the past, have a finished product to deal with. They can HEAR the completed music piece. They can SEE the finished painting. Even with a novelist, you can read the book. With a screenwriter’s screenplay, where’s the FILM or even TV show? I think that one would have to have at least a modicum of these to show before someone (a Benefactor worth his/her reputation?) would take on a screenwriter in such a capacity.
Konrad:
I think you’re picking up on the intended subtext here, which is this: Ted and I and John and the others are of some value, but don’t rely on us.
Do you need help to get a job? Yes and no. I’ll be as frank and as harsh as reality itself: no one helped me get my first job. No one. In fact, as is the case in every highly competitive field, most of my peers were probably rooting for me to fail.
I’m not saying that you ought to discount us mentors, but we simply won’t get you where you need to be. You must pursue your benefactor.
Ted G:
Our wares are screenplays, or “theories of films”, not films themselves. You need to show a good screenplay in order to prove that you can write a good screenplay. The analogy to other artists is still valid.
Craig, well done. I’ve never had a mentor. I never did an internship in college either because I was paying my way and wouldn’t work for free, too attached to food and clothing to do that. I used to lament that I didn’t have a mentor and then realized that it was a waste of time. Unfortunately in Hollywood, nobody is going to give you anything unless there is something in it for them. Much like the rest of the world I guess. Benefactors have worked out fine for me, the relationship is a very simple one. The only issue is I wish I was writing less and getting paid more. Not that I’m lazy at heart but there are several things that I could be doing and enjoying other than writing, golf, tennis, margarita’s, etc. Besides feeling like a pulp writer of dime store novels, (I’m on my 6th screenplay that I’ve been paid for this year, all grossly underpaid though) it’s not a bad problem to have. My latest brainstorm is to become a director, they get paid better.
Craig, Not to be argumentative, but is Tim Burton really J.A.’s benefactor or patron? By your definition, they seem more like collaborators… I don’t think Burton pays August to write anything. But studios do like to pay them to collaborate. And I like to watch the results. You see, Burton is more of a Miss Havisham to John’s Pip and Amy Pascal is more of Magwitch, oh, nevermind…
Craig:
I guess my main problem with the whole idea of a Benefactor is that it goes against the very idea of learning. I never had a Mentor either but because I was an agent, I was constantly dealing with writers and their scripts. Through years of trial and error I finally got to a place where I was not only confident in my work but employable as well.
I think the people who read your blog and other blogs are probably split down the middle in their intent. One half loves reading stories about the business, little funny stories, and insights from a working writer. And yes, the other half is probably looking for you to help them. I know I’m here for the former. I wanted to see what the whole blog thing was about after I was offered a freelance column in a popular but shitty gossip mongering newspaper in NY. Turns out I like the whole atmosphere but I realized that writing a column like this would do more damage than good for a man in my position. Now for the others that are in the latter, yeah, they need some help. No, not help. Guidance. Why? Because I stress again…
Most writers are not very good.
Most writers need to learn.
Benefactors are only employers. Mentors are teachers…by definition (HA!). Of course getting paid for your work is key. But if you don’t have the skills to write a proper piece of work, that key won’t fit into the lock of the entertainment business.
I’ve been in this business now for 13 years. And I’m guessing that NO ONE in LA has ever heard of me and in NY maybe…one or two people.–I believe I met Joshua James at a wrap party for a film I directed. My point is this, it took 13 years for me to even get to this point. I live comfortably as a Director/Writer/Producer but I still have a ways to go. I’m sure you’ve met a bunch of writers. And how many of them think that they’re great? And then you read one of their specs and it absolutely stinks? That’s what the business is full of. People who are unwilling to learn. If your primary purpose is to SELL YOUR SCREENPLAY, GET OPTIONED, GET PAID, GET WRITING ASSIGNMENTS, and you don’t realize that a 146 page screenplay probably won’t even be read…you’ve missed out on some learning opportunities.
A Mentor.
Like it or not, that’s what you are Craig. A Mentor. And you’ve helped a great deal of people who probably would be reeling in shit without you.
Deal with it.
Great post. I’ve been a Ronin for about six years, now, and the twin problems are you don’t really have a safe place to hang out when the biz turns on you, and you can’t get that real world feedback on ideas, scripts, etc. No one is going to tell you “That idea sucks!” in this business, they kill you with kindness. But when you’re pitching an idea to someone who you’ve worked with often enough that they can be honest with you, you have a chance to fix problems or discard things that sounded good only to you.
I think one of the biggest problems for writers (okay, it’s my problem, but I’m sure others have it, too) is that we are loners by nature. We spend so much time working alone, that we may not even be looking for masters or mentors. Huge mistake – no one succeeds in this business on their own.
I would love to find me some good benefactors – though I’ve been paid for writing (more theatre than film) one thing I’ve learned the past year or so, whilst wandering and learning in screenplay land, is the meaning of value – and that there are many more mentors than there are benefactors (which, by Craig’s definition, seems to mean employers) and that ultimately, a benefactor is part and parcel of what we all seek, is it not? To benefit from our craft.
It’s one thing for a person to read a script and give you feedback on it, cut this, change this, this is great, this sucks – for free. It’s quite another for a person to pay us and then go – cut this, change this, this is great and this sucks, in essence, putting their money where their mouth is. It’s a huge thing, one I didn’t appreciate in theatre in the beginning (that’s a different world in a way anywar) and that I now do. Value and access (there’s a subject we could hear more about, though).
Not to take away anything from mentors – they’re important, too, just a very different role.
And hey Kevin, I remember meeting you at the buchwald party / thing.
….or you could have a mentor that’s brutally honest, be it positive or negative, that also knows a lot of people (including your eventual benefactor).
Who were are first mentors? Who were our first benefactors?
Our parents.
Mentors come in many forms and from the most unlikely places.
As writers, we write about life…a good chunk of our own weaved into our storys…hopefully.
And why not count every person, every person with whom we have interaction, as a mentor of sorts. “Get sum teach’n from all walks of life.”
In grad school (wasn’t a writing student), had this mentor/professor. For a project, he assigned us to find a mentor for a skill we didn’t have. In my case I chose painting. Yet, I learned more about fly fishing from him than painting. Except, “not too much yellow fellow.”
I could have chosen something like auto repair…which, in retrospect, might have served me a little better down here in LA.
-jp
I’m just dreading all the oral sex.
Derek:
I guess I look at it this way: the most evolved writer-benefactor relationships do approximate honest partnerships.
They sort of approach partnership asymptotically, but they never really get there in the truest sense.
I’m being a bit presumptuous about another writer’s relationship with a director, so let’s not use John and Tim per se. Let’s just say that in general, an A-list director has great influence over which writer will be hired when. In that regard, a steadily working director can act as an employing agent, as it were.
If Spielberg says, “I want Koepp,” then Koepp gets hired. I think. I mean, I haven’t had the “Spielberg wants Mazin” experience yet (to his detriment, btw!), so I can’t say this for sure.
I am wondering if the Mentors and Benefactors of the world actively seek students of knowledge themselves, or do they just sit around the Underwood, I mean Powerbook, and wait for the doorbell to ring? Is it the proverbial Catch-22 like the ‘how to get an agent-need to sell a script’ analogy or do Mentors and Benefactors welcome all comers? It seems to me that if they only answer the door to those they know or have heard of, only the people who need the least amount of help gets inside. I can only knock on so many doors before I start to hear the whispers from the other side of the door ‘sshhh, it’s that frigging Moviequill guy again, he bangs on my door once/week. Give him a donut and tell him to go to the library or something’.
Screenwriters won’t learn much in film school you couldn’t buy for $12.95 at Samuel French. What you can’t get anywhere else, however, are the mentor/benefactors, usually Big Deal Alumni, who teach you how to do this thing and/or put up the scholarship money to make it possible. There’s only one way to re-pay that kind of generosity, and that is success. Adulation, sexual favors and passing it on, strictly optional.–JGTH, THINGS THEY WON’T TELL YOU IN FILM SCHOOL
Ah, the Catch-22 argument.
That keeps a lot of people down.
The books we can read about how to make it in Holloworld…sorry…um.
The mentors we seek. The praise. The benefactors. The Oscar. The recognition. The paycheck.
If only if.
If only if they’d see how brilliant we are or more important…could be.
What about now?
Why do we write? Except for…you know…the oral sex.
-jp
But isn’t it the mold that the mentor helped shape that caught the attention of the benefactor?
I still believe that mentors could be writers of the past whom you have not physically encountered, only through text. I’m sure there are quite a few writers who would consider Shakespeare and other notable greats as their mentors.
So unless you looked up to no one when constructing your screenplay, paid no attention to sage advice found in quotes, interviews, articles, and didn’t “listen” to what the writer is saying while reading a script–I would say you did have a mentor.
I’m with others who’ve said “shore nuff would luvs to get me one of them there benny-factor folks — where do I sign up?”
Craigslist ddn’t have any. eBay neither.
I bet they have lots of them listed on those damned UTA Jobs Lists….
Meanwhile, I’m not sure I even have a “mentor.” In truth, I have growing doubts about names pencilled into the “friends” category, too.
I deserve pity. . . . B
Mentor, Benefactor, use whatever terminology you like. The following is still the case: If a person has nothing invested in your writing, they have no real incentive to make you write better. Even if you can’t get paid up-front cash at this stage in your career, if you can write in such a way that someone else stands to suffer if your writing isn’t up to scratch, then that person will suddenly become a lot more interested in lifting your game than in making you feel good.
Craig,
I would extend your critique of mentors to writers’s groups. Would you agree?
Dear Mentor,
Would you be so kind as to introduce me to a benefactor? Thanks.
Actually, who was it that said “The quality of how you work depends on whom you get to know.”?
I believe I read it on Wordplayer.com
So, Craig, how did you get your first job?
How did I get my first job?
I went to a Temp Agency in town, demonstrated my typing skills, and was hired three days later by an ad agency as an assistant.
I knew no one.
If you can’t be honest with yourself (I for one am terrible at it) you can count on Craig to give you a reality check. It’s posts like this one that keep me coming back to his blog. I didn’t write this to kiss Craig’s ass. I’ve tried that before and it’s futile.
I believe, it’s a basic truth of the business that only those who write well, make others read their good writing, believe their writing has commercial value and charge accordingly consistently get writing work.
Sigh.
How did you get your first screenwriting job?
Though I can and do agree with the “Get yourself a benefactor” half of your assertion, Craig, I’m really pretty stumped at what “Screw mentors” has to do with it.
I mean, I could make a very similar argument under the title, “Screw Writing Screenplays, Get Yourself a Movie Deal.” Because screenplays are a waste of time, really. You’ll never get anywhere if you spend years sittng alone typing and going to conference room meetings and taking notes from clueless executives who tell you they love it one week only to tell you the next that they want a free rewrite because they want to “make the script better,” no no… screw that!
What you want is to get a MOVIE made. So stop wasting your time with these people. Go out and get hired by Jerry Bruckheimer — I know I did!
Okay, but seriously. Many mentors are far more helpful — careerwise as well as creatively — than you’re portraying here, and conversely I have had many paying “benefactor” jobs which turned out to be worse than an utter waste of time.
I mean, seriously, what’s a better way to spend the summer — as an unpaid intern at Clint Eastwood’s company, or as a paid hack writing softcore porn videos for Cinemax After Dark? Especially if Clint has taken a liking to you?
My initial association with Ted and Terry was unpaid, and I turned away from other, far more established producers who were dangling the promise of money at me to get me to work for them instead. The paycheck was less important to me than the creative sync. That early choice has made my career.
Look, I get the spirit of what you’re saying, and I can agree with roughly half of it. Benefactors are a great, great thing. Who wouldn’t rather be paid than just “encouraged?” But many mentors become benefactors, enable you to meet them, or at least provide you with enough creative oxygen to keep on writing until you’re good enough to land a benefactor on your own.
It is not an either-or thing as you’ve portrayed it above.
Bill
Bill:
Actually, you’re the poster child for this one.
You transitioned from mentor to benefactor. I’m not saying to people that if they have a mentor, they’ve fucked up.
I’m saying that they shouldn’t be satsified with just a mentor. They need to find someone to pay them.
I’m sorry, but these pro-Mentor people must be high or something. This isn’t plumbing, folks. You can’t just tag along with a guy who knows the shit and pick it up from him. A real writer learns his moves from hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of people along the way. For instance, my “mentors” would include:
a) the writers I have tried (consciously at first, unconsciously at present) to imitate; guys with names like Hemingway and Twain and Vonnegut and Thurber, half of whom were dead before I was born and the other half of whom I have never met.
b) all the people who have ever taught me anything about the human condition, from the bored waitress at the local Denny’s with all the tattoos, or the Iraq vet on TV talking about what it’s like to spend every day walking through the desert, trying not to die. Also, every girl I have ever dated, loved, or been loved by.
c) every person who has ever read a single word I have ever written and told me what they thought of it. Not all of them knew how to fix my shit, but EVERY human being knows beef from bone when it comes to story, and all of them had at least one piece of wisdom to impart.
The point is, walk a block down a city street and you will run into many mentors, most of whom will teach what they have to teach regardless of whether you care to learn it. That’s the thing about mentor’s: they are a dime a dozen. Benefactors, on the other hand, are much more rare, and much more valuable.
Which must be why they never return my calls.
You’re not saying that people who work with mentors are fucking up? Sorry, I must have misread that line about how mentors just mollycoddle you because it makes them feel good while they secretly want you to fail. Guess I got the wrong impression from that other line about how anyone who isn’t paying you is killing time, your time.
But it’s clearer now: all you were trying to say is, “Try to get paid by somebody someday, too.” Good advice! Can’t argue with that, Craig.
Bill
Come on, Bill, you can get this.
The fact that mentors have ulterior motives doesn’t mean the mentees are fucking up. It means that the mentors are largely a bunch of liars and mollycoddlers. The mentors are fucking up. The mentees are just being mislead.
I suppose if people read this article and still insist on sticking blindly with their mentors, then yes, they’re fucking up.
No, your sarcastic rephrasing of my point is inaccurate. I’m not trying to say, “Try to get paid by somebody someday”. I’m trying to say, “Spend less time with your mentor and more time looking for someone who might pay you someday.
Like you did.
Stop resisting. You’ve already lived the lesson I’m trying to teach.
Hey, everyone! Be like Bill (minus the tepid sarcasm)!
All right, no sarcasm. Suppose there’s this guy who’s written a couple of hit movies. He’s not paying me, but he’s willing to meet with me once a week or so, just to talk to me, to impart his wisdom such as it is.
He says he wants to help me become a better writer, but he’s not offering me a dime. (Nor charging one.) He has strong and lengthy opinions about what makes a good screenplay, foundations of character and all that. He also tells me lots of stories about the business, what it’s like to be on the set of his movies, about the lingo I’ll need to know if I want to impress people, etc.
You’re probably way ahead of me here, so I’ll ask you outright:
Craig, you’re a mentor. So either you’re wrong about mentors, or you are a liar and you are fucking up every time you post something on this website. Oh, and you want everyone who reads your advice to fail, because after all you’re rich and they’re not.
And lest this post be read too harshly, I’ll say that I don’t believe that of you. But if I’m to follow your advice about mentors, I and everyone else who visits here should stop wasting time reading your mollycoddling war stories and get on with finding those benefactors.
I’ll say it again, one has little to do with the other — and where they do intersect, I believe a mentor is often a step TOWARD finding a benefactor.
Now stop hugging your kids, you should be writing!
Bill
Bill:
I think part of the impetus behind my post was to make sure people didn’t mistake a site like this one for the far more valuable relationships that can be attained out there in the cold world.
It’s an important lesson. The internet is a double-edged sword. While you read WordPlay online, you were at a certain level. When you met with Ted and Terry in person, you moved to another level.
It wasn’t the physical act of occupying a space near them. It was clearly something about you that did the trick, and that involved you being ambitious about transitioning from mentee to benefactee.
You write “where they do intersect, I believe a mentor is often a step toward finding a benefactor.”
Yup.
But to answer your direct question (or challenge), I think that I’m right about mentors, I’m not hiding the fact that part of the reason I run this site is for self-gratification, my greasy motives do not make my advice any less brilliant (or any more craptastic), I do not want my readers to fail (probably because I’m successful enough that I’ve earned some ego security at this point…but I’m not sure if the seven-years-ago me would be this big about it), I do want my readers to succeed (because then it would be partly MY success, says the egotist), and while my advice is excellent and always well worth reading, it’s a poor substitute for experiences like the ones that got me where I am.
There were no blogs when I started out.
I guess I’m saying that things are better now…but worse too.