Deborah Cooke: Author

I told you a while back that I had won the RWA PRO Mentor of the Year Award. This is a tremendous honour, and one that really touches me. The award is being presented this morning at the PRO Retreat at the RWA National conference in Anaheim. My friend, Sylvia Day, is accepting the award for me but I thought you all might like to read my acceptance speech. Here it is:

Deborah Cooke’s Acceptance for RWA PRO Mentor of the Year

I am deeply honoured to receive this award and wish I could be with you today. Mentoring is a practice that is important to me, so it’s particularly wonderful to me to be acknowledged for doing it. As part of my acceptance, I’m going to try to persuade you to give this practice a try.

It all begins with a story. Once upon a time, in April 1992, I sold my first book, a medieval romance. I knew nothing about publishing. At that time, the internet was only in its infancy – some of you may remember dial-up bulletin board services – and I knew no other writers in any genre. My guide was a book by Kathryn Falk, the founder of Romantic Times, called HOW TO WRITE A ROMANCE AND GET IT PUBLISHED. I had never heard of RWA and I did not have an agent. I simply referred to the list in Falk’s book for editors who acquired historical romances, and sent mine out. When it was rejected, I revised it and sent it out again. When the editor eventually called to make an offer for my book, I had a lot of questions. I wanted to know the planned print run for my book, for example, and I wanted to read the contract before I agreed to the deal. She could not or would not answer most of these questions. It seemed to me that I was expected to make a business decision with very little data, and to just accept on faith that it was a fair offer. I have a business background so this was a stretch for me. Although I accepted that offer, I believe knowledge is power and I was determined to be better prepared the next time. I booked in to a number of conferences to meet authors and find out more.

What astonished me was how hard it was to discover anything concrete about publishing, particularly about money. Many experienced authors were as evasive as editors and agents, even when asked very simple questions. Some were rude. I heard the phrase “training the competition” more times than I could count. I did not understand this attitude at all. If terms of a contract are non-negotiable, as those of my publisher were reputed to be, why not talk about them? I could not understand the secrecy, much less the hostility. By the fall of that year, I had joined RWA, I had met my editor in person, I had moved back to Toronto and I had joined Toronto Romance Writers. I knew writers by then, but most of them were new kids on the block like me. I also had resolved that I would share what I knew with new authors, if they asked me. My commitment to mentoring had begun.

I made this choice on the basis of principle. I believe that there is plenty of room, even in a crowded market, for each of us to succeed. And I believe that giving back is simply the right thing to do, no matter what you do. I did not want to be one of those bitter authors in the bar, griping about new authors stealing their slots. I never expected that mentoring would help me and my career as much as it has. Mentoring can be instructive in the same way that teaching can be. In explaining something to someone, I invariably understand it better myself, or have a new perspective of that issue as a result of their questions.

But there is another greater benefit. Kim mentions in her nomination letter that the spirit of mentoring is infectious – I agree, but also suggest to you that the notion of who is mentor and who is mentee dissolves very quickly in an ongoing relationship. We each have different experiences and different pieces of information to share. So, it doesn’t take long for any apprenticeship to devolve into an exchange on more even footing. That’s powerful stuff.

Remember the story of the three blind men who encounter an elephant? The one who has hold of the tail thinks the threesome have found a rope. The one who is touching the sides of the elephant thinks that they have found a wall. The one who holds the leg thinks they have found a pillar. It’s only in sharing their observations and comparing their notes that they can collectively perceive that they have, in fact, encountered an elephant. Publishing is a complicated and changing business – no one person knows everything about it, and no one ever will. If anything, it’s a shape-shifting elephant – it’s hard to be sure, with our little bit of information, what will happen next in publishing. Yet we as authors have to make choices all the time. Some of the most helpful conversations occur when I encounter a friend like Sylvia at conference and one of us says “I’ve got this piece of rope, but there’s something unusual about it” and we sit down in a quiet corner and talk through our observations. Invariably, we figure out not only what kind of creature it is, but how big it is and what it’s likely to do when its tail is pulled. This is invaluable, but can only happen when we share.

When we mentor.

I will guess that there are several hundred people in attendance at this retreat. You can choose to look at each other as competition, or you can consider each other to be travellers on the same journey, travellers who can periodically lend each other a helping hand. Look around. You each have arrived at this point by your own path. Some of you have published many works, but are not PAN-eligible. Some of you have experience in bookselling or publishing, independent of your writing. You all have a unique collection of rejection letters, each of which tells you something about the market, the editor, the agent, or the publisher. Every single one of you knows one thing about publishing that no one else in this room knows. If each of you shared one thing, every one of you would increase your understanding of the publishing business exponentially. And you would do it before lunch today. That’s knowledge as power.

In the stories we tell, the hero and heroine are stronger in their romantic relationship than they are individually. Their union is more powerful than the sum of the parts. In exactly the same way, the three blind men have a better understanding of the world around them as a result of sharing their observations, and can make better choices. In precisely the same way, we as authors can better achieve our own versions of success when we create a community that embraces mentoring. When we share our experiences with each other and help newer authors along, we learn in numerous ways ourselves. In addition, it’s just good karma.

This award touches my heart because mentoring is a big part of who I am. I hope I’ve persuaded you to give it a try. I would like to thank Kim Chin-Sam for her lovely nomination letter. I also thank Maura Troy and the nominating committee for giving that letter such consideration. I’d like to thank the Toronto Romance Writers, my land chapter for almost twenty years, for being such a supportive and wonderful group. I’d also like to thank Sylvia Day for taking time out of what must be a very busy conference to accept this award on my behalf.

Thank you all. I hope that you learn a great deal at this conference, and I wish you every success on your publishing journey.