I'd like to say that I'm a successful mentor but that would just raise questions about what a successful mentor is, and how the term should be defined.  For instance, has everyone who has given me advice contributed to every publication I've had?  You know the answer.  If you're a writer... you really know the answer. 

Enough waffle!  The real news is that my mentee got published!

It was a couple of months ago now, a small mag but since I told her to build up her bio with mag publications to aide her chances of novel pickupedness from the slushpileness and she has started down that path successfully, I do feel I had a small hand in her initial success.  The fact that the story didn't take into account all my advice, just shows me how small a hand that was.

My mentee has a feel and passion for writing and she'll do well.  Transforming that to publication is the difficult bit. 

I wonder where I'd be today if I'd been that good when I was 18.  But, of course, there was no way I could've been, and the evolution of me as a writer is a long and complicated process involving sticking a lot of odd stuff into my head and swirling it about until it makes a strange kind of sense.  At 18 my head really was emptier and more jumbled than most 18 year old heads.