What is involved in mentoring writers well? How can mentors support writers and writers’ various projects and aspirations? What are starting points for learning to mentor writing?

So many of us (especially in higher education, literacy education, community education, and adjacent fields) are involved in mentoring and coaching writers. But, typically, we don’t have much training when it comes to mentoring. And much less for mentoring writing!

Back in February, I gave a presentation for Ball State University titled “How Mentors Can Support Writers and Counter Epistemic Injustice.” That presentation addressed which conditions and practices undermine and, in contrast, which support writers. To begin, I shared three assumptions I entered the conversation with. These three assumptions are also three starting points for learning to mentor writing and three understandings of what’s needed to mentor writing well.

Here, I share these three assumptions, which are rooted in my disciplinary training in writing studies (composition, rhetoric, language, and literacy studies). I hope these assumptions may be part of broader conversations about what’s involved in mentoring—and teaching and coaching and supporting—writers. Because, as writers, we need other people, including mentors who help us bring our visions into the world. May we show up as mentors in many capacities, across many contexts, through many roles.

Three Assumptions or Starting Points for Mentoring Writing

A first assumption:
We are writers!

That might not sound like a radical statement, but pause and consider how much runs against that starting point. Years of schooling typically hurt our relationship with writing and can make it particularly hard to claim “I am a writer.” Further, years of teaching can create distance between our own writing and our coaching/mentoring of writing.

I want to start here because how we mentor differs depending on whether we ourselves are engaged in the creative and political and always tumultuous work of writing. My first assumption is that to mentor writers, it is important that we ourselves are writers. To be a writer means that we are both writing and reflecting on our relationship with writing, as complicated as it might be. And what makes it complicated?

A second assumption:
When it comes to academic writing, we are navigating minefields of harm.

On an everyday basis, writers navigate minefields of harm ranging from microaggressions and asymmetrical power relations to various experiences of disregard and invalidation to cultures of violence. Writing is never neutral, and neither can mentoring be. To mentor writers well, we need to understand how systemic injustice works. We need to counter presumed incompetence, characteristics of white supremacy culture, and interlocking oppression. And we need both ongoing self-work and commitments to strive toward justice.

This second assumption asks for acknowledgement, including that our experiences with navigating injustice differ significantly based on our social positionings in the world. The ways we mentor, similarly, differ significantly based on social positionings in the world. Bottom line: we have differential risks and possible actions and consequences to the risks and actions. Mentoring writing, when done well, addresses these differential risks, actions, and consequences.

To mentor writers, then, we need a lot of attention to power relations. What may work for one writer in one context may totally not for another writer in another context. I’ve seen harm happen when mentors give “universal” advice. Because, really … It’s “universal” for whom?

A third assumption:
As mentors, we care about not invalidating writers.

It feels important to name caring as another starting point because when we bring attention to how much violence happens around writing and the mentoring and teaching of writing, a lot of tough emotions can arise. When talking about writing, there’s always a lot of ongoing unlearning and realizing the depth of harm that we’ve experienced or contributed to or been complicit with.

Both writing and mentoring writing involve emotional work!

Before considering any specifics of mentoring, it can help to reconnect with core commitments. I am assuming that for anyone choosing to learn about mentoring writing, these commitments include the deep desire to show up for writers, for students, and for colleagues. Showing up can start with caring about writers’ rights, which include language rights, intellectual property rights, and epistemic rights.

To zoom in on epistemic rights, or the rights to know, I invite you to engage my related articles “The Trauma of Graduate Education: Graduate Writers Countering Epistemic Injustice and Reclaiming Epistemic Rights” and “Asserting the Right to Belong: Feminist Co-Mentoring Among Graduate Student Women.”

Also, consider reading the statement and resources provided in Students’ Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL); Cedric Burrow’s “Writing While Black: The Black Tax on African American Graduate Writers”; April Baker-Bell’s Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy; and Dr. E (Elaine Richardson)’s PHD to PhD: How Education Saved My Life, especially the chapter “The Cleveland State University Years,” where Dr. E says of school English: “It looks you in the face and tells you, you don’t even know what you know” (200). 

If you’re interested in an extended exploration into epistemic injustice, I recommend philosopher Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing.

Questions to Build on These Assumptions

In last month’s workshop, “How Mentors Can Support Writers and Counter Epistemic Injustice,” we spent time slowly walking through the following five questions:

1. What assumptions are we working with? (what I am sharing here and more that emerged in conversation)
2. What is epistemic injustice, and why does it matter for mentoring writers?
3. What can support writers? In contrast, what undermines and derails writers?
4. When it comes to writing, what do we do about the problem of power over? Or, why do we need a broader ecology of readers and mentors?
5. What are next steps for continued un/learning, intention-setting, and acting?

I invite you to explore these five questions on your own, taking time to journal and to talk with friends, colleagues, and co-mentors.

If you’d like to support for mentoring writing, reach out for one-with-one coaching or for tailored programs like this presentation for Ball State’s Building Mentoring Capacities Workshop Series.

And before moving on, consider what assumptions you’d name as important to mentoring writing. In addition to the three I offer here, what other starting points need to be acknowledged and named? What else do you know underlies and shapes the experience of mentoring? When it goes well, what conditions, practices, understandings, and relations are in place?

Many good wishes for writing and mentoring writing and moving writing into the world!

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This post is written by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. for Heart-Head-Hands: Everyday Living for Justice. A few highlights: 

• Join an upcoming writing retreat with time to talk one-with-one.
• Join the next workshop co-facilitated with Candace Epps-Robertson, Ph.D. It’s April 26th: “Where Do I Put My Energy? Navigating End-of-the-Year Exhaustion and Resetting for Summer.”
• Or read one of these related blog posts on mentoring writing: “The Coach as Ideas Editor: How Coaching Facilitates Transformation” or “Countering Imposter Syndrome: Workshop Handouts and Resources.”