Whether you’re a beginner looking to answers to basic questions or a frequently-published writer with years of experience under your belt, every writer benefits from having a mentor.

But how do you know what kind of support and guidance you need? And once you determine that, where do you find the right mentor?

5 Ways Mentorship Benefits You

If you’re not convinced you need a mentor, think about some of the benefits of working with one:

1. Inspiration

The creative energy to write cannot thrive in a vacuum, yet writing is often a solitary act. Input from someone outside of your writing process can breath oxygen into your work and spark new ideas.

2. Honest feedback

Every writer, no matter how experienced, needs a reader to show us when something isn’t working. We all need someone to point out that huge plot hole or to gently tell you, “You’ve done that before. Try something else.”

3. Professional development

Writing is as much a business as it is a creative endeavor, so it’s important to stay aware of new developments in the field. Your mentors share information or point you in the right direction so you can do your own research.

4. Accountability

It’s easy to fool yourself out of writing, particularly when you hit a dry spell. A mentor helps you set clear goals and then checks to make sure you’re meeting them.

5. Emotional support

To be a writer is to face rejection on a regular basis. When no one wants your novel, agents aren’t writing back and you’ve run out of things to write, it’s crucial to have someone you trust telling you, “Yes, it’s hard. Keep going anyway.”

How to find a mentor

Every April, I run a women’s writing mentorship exchange, and I’ve learned so much from working with people to connect them with appropriate mentors.

First and most important of all: You and your mentor must have overlapping interests.

A budding YA novelist benefits from the experience of a published YA author. A woman turning to freelancing so she can work from home after having a baby gains invaluable support from an editor who hires freelancers to fill a weekly publication. A writer for a new late night comedy show guides a budding comedian in choosing projects.

It is not necessary that mentor and mentee share the same race, gender or background, but your mentor needs to be aware of underlying assumptions that might impact the mentoring relationship.

Some questions to ask yourself when choosing your mentor:

• Do you have the same values?
• Does the person have the expertise you’re looking for?
• Do you like the person’s outlook and the type of work they do?

You’ll also need to decide what kind of time commitment you want to make and whether or not you choose to pay for mentoring.

Where should you look for a mentor?

Once you have an idea of what kind of mentor you’d like to work with, it’s time to seek them out. These options are likely to offer candidates.

Self-guided writing groups

Find a group of writers to meet in person or online to read and workshop your work. This type of group is usually free, you can meet on your own schedule and develop a writing community.

Plus, commenting on others’ writing keeps you sharp and helps you develop critical analytic skills to apply to your own work. The main difficulty is finding the right group of people.

Online groups

Free Facebook and Yahoo groups offer a space to share your writing, as well as find contacts and leads on writing jobs. Others are paid resources, including the large UPOD Academy (which has a free Yahoo group attached).

Choose your type of group based on how much you want to pay as well as the size of the group.

Smaller ones allow for more attention from the group leaders whereas larger ones will give you a larger pool from which to find writing partners and readers.

Take a course

Look to your community or art centers for writing workshops lead by local and visiting writers. Many colleges and universities also offer a regular schedule of continuing education writing classes.

The opportunity to receive constructive feedback lead by an seasoned instructor not only helps you edit your work — it also keeps you accountable. When it’s your turn to present, you must have your writing ready.

You can also find online writing classes through sites like Coursera and Writers.com.

One-on-ones

As you spend time in these various writing communities, you’ll meet people who offer private paid mentoring. Paid mentorship allows you to focus directly on you and your needs.

A non-paid, one-on-one mentorship requires more give and take. It’s your responsibility to ask your potential mentor to work with you. You will be the one to make the effort to make contact and make sure the meetings happen on time.

In the course of your writing career, you’ll make business decisions; need editing, ideas for publishing, and contacts for agents and editors; and perhaps someone who will kick your butt into high gear and remind you to keep writing.

It’s up to you to find the best mentoring relationship for your goals and writing style.

Of course, no one mentor fits every need and not every forum will be the right one for you.

Give a new writing group a few commenting cycles to see how you feel about it. If you’re paying for a group, give it a month during which you take advantage of all the group has to offer.

What about a free Facebook group? Watch the group for a month or two and then determine if you’re truly gaining value. If so, great! If not, try something else.

Through trial and error, you’ll develop a network of mentors to support you. As you gain knowledge and experience, you can then pass that wisdom along to others who will benefit from your know-how, too.

How has mentorship changed your experience as a writer?

Now imagine incorporating family, children and pregnancy into the mix — adding the needs and schedules of additional people into your freelance life. How do you embrace the constant stream of demands from your partner, children, self, work and friends without feeling pulled in a million directions?

The Write Life Founder Alexis Grant recently wrote about the benefits of setting up a freelance writing career prior to having kids to allow for greater options once family and children arrive. As a pregnant freelancer with an older child, I can vouch that freelancing does provide greater flexibility than an office job.

However, freelancing with a family definitely requires an additional set of rules and skills. Here are some of the strategies that have helped me manage:

Make a plan

Be crystal clear on your business and your goals. What comes first? What are the top three must-do items on your list?

Setting your priorities allows you to organize your daily and weekly activities so that they support your long-term goals. At the end of each week, lay out what you want to accomplish the following week. At the end of every day, make your to-do list for the next day. Then, each morning, you need only open your to-do list and start working through it.

Outlining your goals will also help you manage your time when emergencies arise. For many freelancers, family comes first: regardless of deadlines, when your family needs you, that’s where your attention goes.

In this kind of situation, rather than scrambling around in triage mode, simply focus on the top items on your list. The rest can wait until you go back to your regular schedule.

Figure out when you do your best work

Maybe you’re the type who grabs available time when it appears and have trained yourself to work in small increments. Or perhaps, like me, you need long blocks of time to focus. Are you a morning person? Or do you work better at night when the kids are asleep?

Find the time that works best for you, and block it off as writing time.

Bestselling women’s fiction author and mother of four Catherine Mann divides her tasks into three types depending on the level of concentration she needs for each. “I edit when waiting in lines, and it’s easier to start and stop. I research while sitting with the family watching television. Fresh writing happens during the precious quiet hours alone.”

Outline your schedule

Lay out all your commitments in your calendar, including deadlines, time to write, meetings, school and anything else you want to do. You may choose to include both work and personal appointments.

Zach Everson, a father of two-under-four who writes for AOL Travel and Gadling, suggests “blocking off family time like any other project. If a client asks for that time, the answer is always no. It’s non-negotiable.”

Some prefer to schedule each minute of the day down to the last second. Others schedule only the most important or organize their time more generally. For example, my daughter Lila goes to school in the mornings, so that’s when I work on my book and write articles. In the afternoons, I focus on smaller work projects, social media and spend time with family.

Always remember to leave extra room in your schedule for the unexpected. While you don’t want to make a habit of deviating from your plan, you want to be flexible enough to accommodate projects that run longer than planned or other life events that might arise. (Click to tweet this idea.)

If possible, rely on a partner…

In her book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg advises that to create a successful work and home balance, you need a partner who is really a partner, someone who puts as much into your home life as you do. She may have been referring to C-suite executives, but her words apply to freelancers as well.

While nothing in this world is perfect and equal, it’s crucial to have a conversation with your partner to assess the needs of the household. Who needs what and when? What is reasonable to expect from each person? Taking all variables into account, decide together who will take responsibility for what.

… Or outsource so you can work efficiently

What if you don’t have a partner? Or if it’s unrealistic to expect your partner to take on additional responsibilities? Sometimes, it simply makes more sense to hire the help you need.

First, identify where you most need extra support. Perhaps formatting blog posts stymies you, or you resent the time it takes to schedule your social media updates. Next, decide which items on your to-do list must be done by you, and which you can hand to someone else. Finally, create a document that outlines how to accomplish each task; you’ll simply hand over processes for someone else to implement. Remember, also, you can hire someone to help you with household chores or babysit if that is more appropriate to your life.

Jillian Tobias, a writer who runs her own social media strategy company, brings in a babysitter to care for her nine-month-old twins for a few hours every day. This arrangement allows her to concentrate on work without worrying about her mom role. As an added benefit, knowing she has limited time to meet deadlines forces Jillian to be hyper-focused and finish her work quickly and efficiently.

Procrastination is your greatest enemy

If you procrastinate away a day of writing time, it’s unlikely you’ll recover that time elsewhere. Instead, you’ll lose sleep, family time or time you set aside to complete other projects.

It takes practice sticking to a schedule and trial and error to learn what works best for you. Ultimately, you have to be honest with yourself. If you’re wasting time, find ways to stop.

Let go of the idea of doing it all

There’s this misguided idea out there that parents must be perfect. Square meals. Proper bedtimes. Only educational activities. Oh, and please keep the house immaculate while writing impeccable prose.

Professional blogger and writer Leigh Ann Dutton advises that you clear all guilt from your mind. “Guilt takes up precious real estate that could be better used moving projects forward or caring for your family.”

If the house gets messy, if you end up wearing dirty clothes, if you order in — it’s ok.

Celebrate your wins

It’s easy to berate yourself for what you haven’t done and forget how much you’ve accomplished. Instead, take time at the end of every week to highlight what you finished and give yourself a huge pat on the back. Your to-do list will be waiting for you when you return on Monday.

Life is too short to spend worrying or feeling frazzled because you can’t do it all or be everything to everyone. Instead, balance your time and life so you can not only complete the work most important to you, but you can spend satisfying, relaxing family time as well.

Do you balance freelance work with family time? What’s your favorite strategy?

Thankfully, there are plenty of apps and tools to keep you organized and focused. Here are seven free tools that help you streamline your daily lists and notes, leaving you more time to dedicate the projects most important to you.

Take notes and manage to-do lists

1. Evernote

Overview: Evernote is the most flexible of the note-taking tools. You can tag each note with keywords, making your files easily searchable and accessible even when you have hundreds of notes. You can attach files, format your notes, and include tables, checkboxes and lists.

Stand out features: The reminders feature emails you a list of things due each day, creating an efficient way to automate your daily to-do list.
If you want to use Evernote to work with teams and share notes across groups, you must purchase their premium service.

Evernote is available for Android, Apple and as a downloadable application for any computer. There’s also an online interface that allows you to work from any computer.

2. Trello

Overview: Trello’s drag-and-drop interface is easy to use, but it is the least robust of the to-do list tools. The main benefit of Trello is it allows free access for multiple users.

Stand out features: You can color-code, use hyperlinks and include checklists in your individual projects.

The premium service allows you to log in through your Google account, and sync your to-do list with your daily schedule.

Trello is available for both Android and Apple mobile, but only Windows 8 for your computer. Otherwise, you must use the Trello web interface.

3. Todoist

Overview: Todoist is simple to use and easy to navigate. You can tag your tasks for easy searching as well as organize them by group or task. Formatting options for tasks, however, are limited.

Stand out features: Todoist allows you to set priorities within your tasks and lets you create sub-projects and hierarchies within your task list. The Todoist productivity feature lets you see how much you’ve accomplished in the last week.

Todoist has the most flexible options for mobile devices, operating systems, and platforms. Unfortunately, adding notes and attaching files is a premium-only feature.

4. Google Calendar + Tasks

Overview: Google is the king of free organization apps. The tasks and calendar fit together seamlessly, and it’s easy to set reminders for both tasks and meetings to appear either in your email or as pop ups.

Stand out features: Google gives you free access not only to scheduling and tasks but to a host of features that help you organize your time, maintain your files and keep track of your websites and business.

Google Tasks aren’t as intuitive as the other to-do list tools, but the sheer number of options available to you via Google makes the learning curve worth the effort. You can access it online and from all mobile devices.

Schedule Your Time

5. Youcanbook.me

Overview: Youcanbook.me automates your meetings. You set a calendar according to days and times you’re available, then simply send your calendar link to clients or colleagues when you want to schedule a meeting.

Stand out features: Both you and meeting attendees receive an email with pertinent meeting details. You can design your calendar to match your website as well as include your company logo.

The service connects with your Google Calendar to automatically create meeting entries as well as assure you don’t double book your time.

Measure Your Productivity

6. RescueTime

Overview: You think you’re just quickly checking Facebook or email and then you’ll get back to work? RescueTime lets you know exactly how fast those moments add up to a big waste of your time.

Install RescueTime on your computer, then rate websites, tasks and applications on a scale of very productive to highly distracting. RescueTime logs the amount of hours you spend on your computer and then lets you know how much of that time was actually productive.

Stand out features: You receive a weekly emailed report of where you used your time and exactly how much of it was used productively.

It can be a bit of a shock at first to see exactly how much time you’ve wasted, but awareness — and perhaps a bit of shame — allows you to tweak your computer usage, making your work time more efficient.

Work with a team

7. Asana

Overview: Asana streamlines processes for teams to work together so that all members of the team can easily update and be updated. It is free and accessible via any internet browser. Asana’s options make it ideal for managing anything from customer relations to keeping track of pitches.

The interface isn’t as intuitive to use as some of the other options, but its gallery of helpful videos will get you started.

Stand out features: You can sign in via Google, sync with your calendar and add team members and tasks from your email and social media accounts.

There’s no one perfect solution to keep track of what you have to do, but these free tools certainly make it easier. It takes a bit of trial and error before you know which will work best for you, but once you find your own process, you can keep track of everything you need and automate some of the more tedious details, leaving you more time to write, make contacts and develop your writing career.

What are your favorite free productivity tools?

Have you found yourself feeling rudderless with your writing?

Maybe you’re writing and even publishing regularly but don’t seem to be moving toward any specific destination. Or maybe you can’t even find the motivation to sit down at your desk for more than an hour.

There’s a good chance you feel this way for a specific reason: because you don’t have a clear goal for your writing career.

When you have an overarching goal you know:

+ Where to pitch

+ What to write about

+ What types of articles you want to write

+ Where you want to publish

+ Whether you want to write short or long form

So what’s the best way to create goals that will help you produce work you’re proud of?

Here are three steps that will help you create clear goals and accomplish the things that really matter.

Step 1: Identify your big picture

This goes beyond setting goals for individual projects and instead spans all parts of your writing life, from pitching to craft to the business side.

It also means identifying your WHYs. Are you writing to present yourself as an expert in a particular area? Do you want to support yourself through your fiction writing? Or maybe you plan on strategically guest posting to bring an audience to your website who will buy your books or other products?

Brainstorm all the things you’d love to see yourself accomplishing as a writer. Once you’ve got your ideas down on paper, streamline those thoughts by writing in one sentence that encompasses your overall objective for writing.

For example, here’s my overarching objective:

I want to build a writing and education business that empowers and inspires people to express themselves creatively while allowing me to work where I want.

Step 2: Outline the steps you must take to accomplish your objective

Each big picture requires a different set of tasks. And each short-term goal will flow naturally from your big picture goal.

In my case, if I want people to see me as someone who can help them write books, memoirs and short stories, I must show I know what I’m doing. So I regularly write, pitch and publish articles about how people can move forward at all stages of the writing process.

I also want to make sure my clients know that my writing expertise is hard won through personal experience. Thus, I continue to write my own books and fiction that I share with my clients and audience.

As for where and what I pitch, I focus on writing for an audience interested in the information I offer.

Step 3: Set benchmarks to create accountability and assess forward movement

Create specific dates by which you want to reach each short-term goal. It may initially feel strange and groundless to set deadlines when you’re unsure of how long things should take. Do it anyway. You can always go back and edit. In fact, you should regularly edit and tweak your goals as you gain expertise and knowledge. (Click to tweet this idea).

Also set specific monetary goals that you want to reach by certain deadlines. If you’re looking to make money via guest posting, decide how many articles you want to publish and how much you want to make over the next six months.

Remember, you can make money when paid directly for your writing, but don’t discount guest blogging as a form of marketing to sell products and services on your own website.

If you want another example, take a look at how I break down my objective into specific goals, tasks and benchmarks.

Making room for change

When it comes to setting and sticking to goals, remember: change is a normal part of this process. After all, you’re not going to be able to predict every possibility and option when you first sit down to create your goals.

You should regularly review your objectives and goals to make sure you haven’t outgrown them. If something no longer fits your plan, change it. It’s as simple as that.

The most important element is creating the structure and accountability that supports you and your writing and allows you to grow as a writer and entrepreneur.

What are your goals for your writing? How have they helped you find direction and stay on track?