Collaboration: Allies and Mentors
Being the 4th stage in the hero’s journey
We’ve been looking at the first steps in the hero’s journey - Ordinary Life , Call to Adventure. And yesterday we looked at Ignoring the Call, a lot of you resonated with that.
The next step in the heroes’ journey, is the hero encounters…
Allies and Mentors
If you ignore the call the journey ends and you remain in ordinary life.
Answering your call, tends to coincide with the meeting of allies and mentors.
These show up in all sorts of ways.
Someone passes you a book unexpectedly
Someone buys you a course you couldn’t afford
You reply and say yes to a free Zoom Meeting.
You ask a well crafted question in DM
You write a list of questions for potential mentors, and google the answers on the internet.
Sometimes these allies and mentors are sought out, other times they just show up in your instagram feed (true story)
I read a thing and it said:
“If you could do it yourself you would have already done it”.
I formed the
on the back of great pain, I had worked for years trying to get an agent, and I was offered representation on Friday, but it was withdrawn on Monday.I was lost and hurting, but at the same time I felt like, hey I got far enough to get the first offer, maybe I can help share what that part of the journey looked liked, and maybe with a group I can keep going, because otherwise I might have given up.
A bunch of us banded together as allies and pursued this goal together, and 3 years later we consistently draw strength from each other.
The story ends well, 2 weeks often that initial rejection I signed with my amazing agent!
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
1. What are questions you have that are difficult for you to answer, but might be answered easily by the right mentor?
2. What are ways that I can get in contact with such a person to get the help I need?
RSVP for the illoguild chat, we’ll try to answer your questions. The chat will be focused mostly on point 2, but we’ll cover as many questions for point one as we can.
Hi Adam! It's really hard to get perspective on your own work, so whenever I've had mentor meetings, I like to ask them what's working in my portfolio, what isn't, and what I can do to improve and "level up." I know there are several people offering paid mentorships, but since I'm kind of cash poor at the moment, I try to find free or low cost portfolio reviews (like the ones held by Owen Davey). Looking forward to hearing others' questions and illoguild's thoughts on collaboration!