How I Met My Mentor

A guest post from my writing colleague, Darryl Reed

I spent years telling my wife, my family, and my friends I intended to write. Of course, no one listened.

When I finally retired, we moved into an age 55-plus community in Henderson, Nevada. I joined a writers club called the Anthem Authors at the activity center. It proved to be the perfect learning environment! Some members of the club are well known authors. I was a bit terrified at first, but they proved to be the greatest source of help a novice could ask for.

The writing club featured smaller breakout groups that met separately from the general meeting. Within these units, new material would be presented and critiqued at a more intense degree. I was assigned to one consisting of five other members. I had no idea how lucky I was.

I thought I was the next Ernest Hemmingway, until they got ahold of my first chapter. There was this one lady in particular, who went to town with the red ink on my work. She was good-natured about the corrections, and there were a lot of them. It didn’t bother me, but another fellow critique member thought it did. He pulled me aside after one of our sessions and said, “Do you know who she is?” I told him no, and he said, “That’s Donna Mabry. If she tells you something, you’d better listen. Go home and google her name.”

Well, I did. Donna Foley Mabry is the author of over 33 books. Her best seller, Maude, was the number one best-selling KDP book for non-fiction on Amazon. If I wasn’t intimidated before …

I made it a point to thank her for helping me, but I had to ask her why she did. Her answer were words I will never forget. With a serious face she looked me in the eye and said, “If you weren’t any good, I wouldn’t waste my time on you.”