Cinnamon Pencil: Terms and Conditions
Our great team of writers are based around the UK and your mentor will deliver six sessions of detailed feedback over the nine-month period. In addition, your mentor will put in many hours of work reading your manuscript, highlighting revisions that might be made, thinking about structure and looking at your writing techniques etc. (We gaurantee 20 hours as a minimum but it’s often double this or more in practice.)
Some mentors may be able to meet up, depending on geography and your ability to travel and on any COVID consderations. If this is arranged, meetings will be at mutually convenient times in quiet places (like cafés or galleries) in or near the tutor’s hometown. You won’t be asked to go to the home of someone you haven’t met before.
Some tutors alternatively may be able to offer phone or Skype sessions, but the most common delivery is via email with written follow-ups. Our commitment is to delivering great feedback rather than to the method and, in pairing you with the most appropriate mentor, we can’t guarantee that they will be able to do face-to-face or Skype meetings but we can be certain they will be passionate about your work.
We promise to give you feedback that will put pressure on your writing process, to help you make your manuscript the best it can possibly be, whether it is poetry, short fiction, fiction of nonfiction.
We promise to work with you to take your writing seriously and devote time and attention to making your work shine. We’ve seen manuscripts transform, even when they’ve been strong at the outset.
The nine-month programme is £2000 for prose manuscripts (up to 100,000 words) and £1,200 for poetry manuscripts (up to 60 poems).
We do have a limited number of partial bursary places and also a facility to pay by instalments. However, the payment agreed on at the outset is payable even if you decide to discontinue the mentoring. We recognise that life can get in the way and in cases of serious illness and unforeseen major life events we always try to be flexible and will waive remaining fees whenever possible. We are also open to people deferring to another year when circumstances get in the way. But it is fair to say that this is a serious commitment.
Mentoring opens your work to rigorous feedback. This will always be given with the aim of helping you push your boundaries and with a constructive goal in sight, but it’s worth considering that it can feel vulnerable. The work is always yours and your mentor will be making suggestions and sharing their own experience of pushing work to new places, but it is then up to you how you incorporate those suggestions and what to use and what not to. A good mentor holds a constructive space for you to stretch your skills and your voice.
Occasionally, a mentee and mentor don’t quite gel straight away. In most cases, this just takes a bit of time and deep listening. We can honestly say that it’s rare for things not to settle in and although we will try to offer an alternative mentor if possible, once the year is underway this isn’t always feasible. It is most often the case that it takes a lot of courage to trust your work to someone new and to begin to see it from another perspective, but once you do, the benefits flow.
You can share any concerns with Jan at any point and don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is ever a problem, but do also give the relationship time to establish and develop.
Of course, if your mentor has to drop out for any reason, we will ensure continuity of mentoring.
In the case of professional misconduct we would naturally either find you a new mentor or you could decide to cease mentoring with no further fees. We’re happy to say, however, that this has never happened over the course of nine years and more than a 150 students.