The Five Mistakes I Most Often See When Editing Client Poems

And by mistake, I mean place of growth

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

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You might not know that one of the ways that I fund my writing life, alongside Substack, is through mentoring writers and editing their work. My mentoring is what I like to think of as ‘holistic’, because creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Your life feeds into your practice and sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes this might impact negatively. A lack of confidence, and frustration at being stuck with your work are common issues amongst the writers I mentor. These are areas that take time to work through, but often a one hour session is enough to make a creative breakthrough and get a client back on the right track. This is work I love, I come away feeling nourished, I grow as a writer and find, often, that the guidance I offer a client is a kind of mirror for myself, there is inevitably a place of growth within my client meetings for me as a writer, and as a human animal!

Part of what I offer with mentoring is editing suggestions on client work. I do this as a separate service too, for people who are, for example, preparing a piece of writing for submission. Here are the five mistakes places for growth I most often see when editing client poems.