Quick update to let you all know that we have, with great difficulty, selected 10 of the 60 wonderful applications we received to send on to the editors. The shortlisted writers have been informed this morning via email. CONGRATULATIONS YOU STARS!
We will also send an email out to those who didn’t make it on this occasion. If that is you, please don’t be disheartened. We always get more good applications than we have space to mentor, and it doesn’t mean your writing isn’t good or won’t succeed elsewhere. With that in mind, I wanted to share a little about the process:
We look first and foremost at the quality of the writing sample. But what does quality mean? For me, I look for a voice that’s so much fun to read that I forget I’m reading it ‘for work’. Story-telling ability; something that makes me believe I’m there, with those people. A sense of tension and the drama in all kinds of moments.
The paragraph of ideas matters because it shows the reader whether you have a sense of where the book is going. Are there any surprises? Good surprises or just surprising surprises? We look at this second, to get more context on the whole book you want to write, and whether it seems as if you’ll be able to complete it to a publishable standard in a year (the aim of the mentoring). We also think about whether the story might work differently – whether certain editorial suggestions might make sense, for example, pitching it at a different age range.
The letter of application gives us more of a sense of where you’re coming from and where you want to get to – and we might find out from it that an applicant isn’t eligible (for example, being under 18 – please see the FAQs on this website). We don’t get many ineligible applications.
Finally, on a personal note, I just loved reading all your samples, and also all your letters of application. It was moving and empowering for me to realise that there are people out there, who I don’t know at all, who agree with me about the kind of stories and perspectives that are missing from our bookshelves – and how important it is to tell those stories, and how much we want to read them and have them to pass on to the next generation. I couldn’t put every sample I loved on the shortlist, but I do hope to keep connecting with you all via the Community strand. Keep writing!
– Leila Rasheed
