“The mentoring programme gave us access to writers who were way way senior in their field. You’d never have got to meet them otherwise, let alone receive their direct attention on your work.”

Lynn acknowledges there’s a lot of controversy about the place of writing programmes. “As far as I’m concerned every bit of teaching, mentoring and connecting up with a writing community of practice is invaluable.

“If you don’t belong to a community of practice you tend to write from your default point of view and nothing shakes you from that. Getting input from other writers, from readers, mentors and tutors – all that intensive personal support looking at your work – helps enormously, puts you in the driver’s seat, able to make your work better.”

After her second year at Whitireia, Lynn went on to do her Masters in Creative Writing at Victoria University and is now in the second year of her PhD. Her thesis, which is also her manuscript, sits across several genres and has a working title of “The Universal Glossary”.