The Mentorship
(Author Mentorship & Story Development Coaching)
Great literature isn’t written from control, it’s written when you allow yourself to let go.
Holding your story tight with rules, formulas, and frameworks got you through the beginning stages of writing fiction, but you’re not a beginner anymore.
Control hurts your process more than helps—it sends you spinning and stops the work.
Oh, but letting go.
Letting go so your characters are terrifyingly vulnerable with the reader in the most beautiful, raw and gripping way.
Letting go so the story moves, masterfully paced and immersive.
At your experienced level, you know that doesn’t come from following overcomplicated storytelling techniques or a plug-and-play template.
A novel that molds to the bend of your back like a lover comes from making, trusting, and executing on creative decisions based on how your story actually wants to move.
Less second-guessing and overthinking.
More trusting your characters, your story, and yourself.
You are making art, after all.
Author Mentorship is a selective space.
You’ll learn one-on-one from an acclaimed author how to make creative decisions that take every character you’ll ever write from who they are to who they’re becoming.
This will happen with such precision and depth, your characters will be read, and re-read, and re-read.
You get to break up with the mental gymnastics of “my God, I’m making it worse,” and the drama of threatening to throw the whole draft away because “making it worse” is no longer an option.
You’ll only know how to make it richer
We begin by building The Current — an understanding of your character's inner world and how it moves through their outer one — and from there, every creative decision you make will have a foundation to stand on.
We'll find the story you're actually writing, which is almost never the story you think you're writing. We'll see honestly what's missing, what's flailing, and what the story is asking for next. We'll find what's already flourishing and build momentum from it. And then we'll write — or rewrite — through this new lens, with the story finally moving the way it always wanted to.
Because whether you’re on your first or fifth draft, writing has never been your problem. Meaningful prose that moves hearts to bursting is as natural as skin in summer.
The problem is seeing what your story actually is and trusting your decisions to tell it.
This is the place.
The Mentorship is a private, one-on-one experience.
We begin with your draft — or however much you have — so I can sit with your story before we sit together. From there, we meet weekly in fifty-minute sessions to review feedback, brainstorm, plan, and follow wherever the story needs to go.
Every exercise, meditation, book or film recommendation that finds its way to you will be chosen specifically for your story and where it is right now — nothing generic, nothing off the shelf.
For the moments when the story can't wait until our next session, there's the option to add direct access between our meetings — voice messaging, Tuesday through Thursday, for when something is pulling and you need a second mind on it immediately.
You've been writing for years. You have an advanced understanding of craft — formally or self-taught. You're not looking for someone to teach you the basics. You're executing, not exploring, and something in you knows the story is right there, just past whatever is currently in the way.
FAQs
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Let’s start with the practical, “good on paper” stuff. I have a BA in English, Creative Writing concentration; and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction). Moving on to my experience as an author, I’ve self-published one book of literary fiction that readers “couldn’t put down” (their words, not mine), and called “a lesson in fearless writing.”
My second novel, BLUE HOUR, was traditionally published and made most anticipated lists in several publications including Electric Literature and Ms. Magazine. After publication, the novel won the 2024 Clara Johnson Award for Women in Fiction, was featured by Coco Gauff, Emma Roberts, and Dua Lipa; made Vulture’s Best Books of 2023, and was a Barack Obama summer reading list pick.
I’ve guided 100+ authors in writing character-driven fiction through private mentorship, group programs, online workshops and writing retreats.
I have clients who have signed with agents, received six-figure book deals, and been number one bestsellers.
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I’ll quote The Diary of Anais Nin, my philosophy is “to write as one thinks, in the order and disorder in which one feels and thinks, to follow sensations and absurd correlations of events and images, to trust to the new realms they lead one into.”
Writing a novel gets to be a simple, human act. Even literary fiction. Right now everything helping authors write literature feels like over-processed hair—they’re doing too much.
They’re also primarily speaking to beginners, which isn’t you. You don’t need to be convinced that you’re story matters or someone out there is waiting for your book. You aren’t looking for formulas and plug-and-play templates, and you don’t want to be told exactly what to do.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t need or should have any less support for your novel.
In my five years of author mentorship, I’ve found I work best with more experienced writers like you who don’t need to be taught the craft basics and more information, but a clearer way to think about and make decisions from the information you’ve gleaned over the years as it applies to the specific story you’re writing now.
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Literary fiction (but will sometimes make an exception for memoir, especially if it reads like fiction). I love stories of women moving through a reclamation, diverse stories that are emotionally raw and honest, stories that aren’t afraid of the dark.
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You have an advanced understanding of craft and/or written storytelling, either formally or self-taught. You may have a creative writing degree (bachelors, masters, or both), have published a novel, short stories, or creative nonfiction, or are accomplished in another writing medium like journalism. You have worked with an editor, writing mentor, or book coach before and/or already understand the basics.
The Mentorship
Three Weeks
$3,750
Six Weeks
$6,000
Testimonial
“When I first connected with Tiffany, I had no idea how to structure or finish the second and third acts of my book. My goal in the 6-week author mentorship program was to figure out the book's story arc and at least have chapter outlines for the rest of my unwritten material. But with her guidance, I finished the program with a full book draft!
We started our work together with a brilliant strategy: figuring out what the vision for the book was and then deciding which chapters fueled that vision and how. Tiffany also educated me about how to check for tension and intrigue in each of my chapters. She also offered line edits that were some of the best I have ever received — strengthening the voice of my younger narrator.
I genuinely can't tout this program and the opportunity to work with Tiffany enough. It was worth every penny, and I hope to work with her again in the future. If you give the author mentorship program your full attention, you will only walk away with progress in the right direction towards your vision."
—Christina Veta, New York Times Journalist
(signed with literary agent 12/25)
Testimonial
“I really started on this project with a prayer and a dream to be honest. l knew l wanted to write a story, and I knew a few things about who and where it was about, but that was it.
And what Tiffany did with that in such a short period of time was genuine magic. We created so much of these people, and so much or their lives, and suddenly l cared about them and knew them and realized what their story was going to be about. Somehow, thanks to her, now I have an entire first part of a book and actual plans for the rest. And it feels like it's a story worth telling, and that's because of her. She is not only a spectacular and emotional and genuine writer but she's also a brilliant and informed and insightful teacher, which is an insane combination if l ever saw one. I could never thank her enough.
Working with Tiffany is honestly to me about as close as you can get to working with an oracle. She will just casually hand out these pieces of information or insight that are so profoundly correct, so creatively important that it changes everything you're writing for the better - and she'll do it like it's nothing. Over and over again. She'll do it while simultaneously holding so much empathy and emotional honesty for you and for herself so you never feel talked down to. You never fee like an imposter. That makes it so much easier to write emotionally honest characters. because it's an emotionally honest space.
It's really special to be able to work with a person who can do that. Tiffany's probably the smartest person l've ever talked to, let alone worked with like this.
It was a fucking joy. "
—Ash Nicholson, published author
Testimonial
“Without hyperbole, I have been circling around long-form writing my whole life. It wasn’t until connecting with Tiffany at a writing workshop that I felt like I could actually do it, that I could actually prioritize this calling, and somehow weave together stray images, ideas, themes, experiences and dreams into something meaningful — for myself, and for a reader.
Our sessions moved quickly from “I don’t really know what I want to write” to having a real story — real characters and important stakes and rich backstory and inciting incidents that moved the plot along to take said characters on inner and outer journeys.
Tiffany is a very special blend of mystical and pragmatic. She is kind, generous, funny — but doesn’t suffer fools. She is just the person you want on your team, helping to shepherd the work along.
You will still sometimes stare up at the mountain and wonder why the hell you are doing it, and if it’s worth it, and then Tiffany will remind you that you know the answer and she’ll give you just the right tools and encouragement to stay the course."
—Joanna Pawlowska, Senior Creative Producer, NPR