Please believe me when I say I am not even beginning to delude myself that I will be accepted on to either of these courses, but considering that I would have to pay immediately if I got accepted, I would like to know which you would apply to first if you had the spare cash?

Which one is better? Which one is more renowned in the publishing industry? Which, could you hazard a guess, has more of its entrants published at some point? (Not that that's the most important factor!) They both cost about the same...
 
Edited by jawad at 17:00:00 on 17 March 2014
Edited by jawad at 17:01:00 on 17 March 2014

I think it would depend a lot on what structure suited me, and my work. As I recall, Faber Academy is closer to an MA in style (which of course is another option), whereas Gold Dust is more of a mentoring setup. It depends what suits you, and whether you work better in a group (the process of reading and feedbacking others' work is immensely good for your own) or whether the flexibility of one-to-one stuff is better. You also, I think, have some say in who you study with, at Gold Dust, which might be a factor.

You're right, I think, that how-many-published isn't necessarily the deciding factor (not least because Faber Academy hasn't been going as long) - it depends SO much on who goes in, and who they take on. A friend who's just been picking their mentees for a very prestigious mentoring scheme said explicitly that they didn't pick the very finished, very together writers who clearly were going to get published at some point and just needed a final bit of help and shoving to get to that point. They went for the stuffed-full-of-potential-but-tons-of-work-to-do writers. If you do that, as a teacher/mentor, your students-getting-published statistics may not look so good. But that doesn't mean you're not as good a teacher. Indeed, it's mostly the really terrific teachers who think - and work - that way, and that's what you want: a really terrific teacher.

and that's what you want: a really terrific teacher

 
 
I totally agree. The problem is finding one. Don't be lulled by courses, academies, etc. One of the laziest elements of teaching/mentoring in the writing world is that rarely are the people calling themselves such actually trained to do it. There are people 'mentoring' for organisations that have had a couple of books published but have no background in teaching. The Arvon Foundation, for example, provides no training for its tutors.
 
I've just had a quick look at the Gold Dust site, and can't see any mention of even the founder having been trained in mentoring or coaching or teaching. It's quite extraordinary, when you think about it. Imagine rolling up to a school and telling the Head that you're going to teach and mentor maths; when he asks you what qualifications you have, you say, "None."
 
And if you think I'm being picky, I know quite a few writers who've paid for writing mentors and ended up dissatisfied, usually because their 'mentor' wasn't able to give them what they needed; instead tended to talk only about what they thought was important. The right kind of impartiality that a coach or mentor needs might just be in the natural approach of the person calling themselves that. It's more likely, however, that they need to learn it.
 
By the way, Gold Dust appears to be charging around £190 per hour for its mentors. Really, you'd be much better off finding a good freelance editor at a fraction of that cost. They're using the old trick of playing on your getting-published dreams. This should ring alarm bells:
 

Relying on such a prestigious group is what makes Gold Dust distinctive.  All our mentors are represented by agents of course, and might recommend a new writer to an agent – I leave that up to them.  I’m always happy myself to do this, if I believe in a writer’s promise.
 

I agree with Terry - I've stumbled upon a professional, experienced editor who specialises in my field  -and has the credentials to prove it - and it costs £520 for an in-depth edit of my entire 74,000 word manuscript.

Much better value than anything else I've come across.

I've never heard of Gold Dust so for me that would be a non-starter. 

The Faber Academy, however, is definietly worth considering, assuming you are looking  for a course, although don't expect to come out if any course with a complete and publishable novel. Learning the craft is a marathon, not a sprint. If you haven't done so already, I would also recommend writing a couple of novels and  getting some peer reviews of your work and practice critiquing the work of others under your belt before signing up to one. So you can get the most out of it, and be off to a running start,  rather than it being a very steep learning curve. 
 Louise Doughty is one of the tutors at the Faber Academy, and an accomplished author, and she's an Arvon tutor.  I can recommend her. 
Edited by NMott at 21:44:00 on 18 March 2014

 Louise Doughty is one of the tutors at the Faber Academy, and an accomplished author, and she's an Arvon tutor.  I can recommend her. 

She's also a Gold Dust stalwart, FWIW. Most of the Gold Dust mentors are hugely experienced writer-teachers - just at a quick glance, Richard Skinner teaches on the Faber Academy course and at Goldsmiths, Romesh is on the staff of the Goldsmiths MA, and others do similar teaching on other big-name MAs. Several at Arvon and so on, plus RLF posts (which I can say from personal experience is some of the most challenging and educative writing-teaching I've ever done). Their prize-head-count's pretty impressive too, if you think that that's relevant. And of the ones I've met (about half) they're all exceptionally nice!

It is expensive - but it's the ongoingness that's interesting and might be worth the price, compared to the one-off-ness of getting an editorial report. Even if the editorial setup includes ongoing discussion of the report, there's a limit of how far you can go without the mentor seeing more work.

On the other hand, if you know of a writer-teacher you admire, I bet quite a lot of them would charge less for a similar setup. You could always approach them and see what they suggest?

On the "which is better known", I think that Gold Dust isn't known so much, in the sense that most people who go through them would probably be saying that they'd been mentored by that writer. They're all names - that's fine.

But when it comes to talking about MAs and courses and things like Faber Academy, all the agents and editors I've ever asked - and it's quite a few - don't care how your novel got to the state it's in when they read it. A covering letter saying that you've done an MA or whatever just reassures them mildly that what you're sending in will be competent, but it doesn't do more than that - especially these days, when there are so many. They've seen plenty of useless novels come off those courses, and even more "MA Novels", and the novels they want are usually the ones which don't look like MA novels, they're just fantastic novels which happen to have been written on an MA.

So I don't think it's worth worrying about that aspect. FWIW,  I tend to incline to the Hemingway principle (I think it's Hemingway): "Don't tell them how you learnt to write that well: let them think you were born that way..." In which case the issue isn't what's known in the industry, it's what's the really right person or scheme for you.
Edited by EmmaD at 23:23:00 on 18 March 2014

  Louise Doughty is one of the tutors at the Faber Academy, and an accomplished author, and she's an Arvon tutor.  I can recommend her.

 
On what basis?
 

She's also a Gold Dust stalwart, FWIW. Most of the Gold Dust mentors are hugely experienced writer-teachers - just at a quick glance, Richard Skinner teaches on the Faber Academy course and at Goldsmiths, Romesh is on the staff of the Goldsmiths MA, and others do similar teaching on other big-name MAs. Several at Arvon and so on, plus RLF posts (which I can say from personal experience is some of the most challenging and educative writing-teaching I've ever done). Their prize-head-count's pretty impressive too, if you think that that's relevant. And of the ones I've met (about half) they're all exceptionally nice!

 
Yes, but . . . I'd still like to know what training they've had in teaching and mentoring. Part of my concern is because my partner is a qualified coach/mentor, and I've seen her work incredibly hard for many years to not only get the qualifications but to become good at what she does. To make the distinction: this is training to teach/coach/mentor, not be skilled at writing and use that as the main qualification for teaching. I've been on courses taken by MA teachers: some are very good and some are very bad - but that's what you'd expect from a selection of people with no real training.
 
The point is, Gold Dust are charging fees equal to a good business coach. So where are their qualifications?
 

But when it comes to talking about MAs and courses and things like Faber Academy, all the agents and editors I've ever asked - and it's quite a few - don't care how your novel got to the state it's in when they read it. A covering letter saying that you've done an MA or whatever just reassures them mildly that what you're sending in will be competent, but it doesn't do more than that - especially these days, when there are so many.

 
I'm sure this is true. But there's perhaps another angle here. The MA/Faber/Gold Dust route I suspect tends to follow a particular philosophy: lots of re-writing, shitty first drafts, etc. So, you may want to consider also trying courses run by highly commercial writers who have almost the opposite philosophy. In particular, I'd recommend the online writing courses on the Oregon coast (or in person if you can get there), details: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=7474. Personally, I've found it very useful to borrow from both philosophies (and everything in-between) to find what works best for me.