Announcing A Writing Retreat! And, Sharing Your Writing Before it's "Good"
As academics, we trade in ideas, not prose. It's time to change that
Hi friends,
Exciting Announcement!
This time I’m not going to bury the lede: Mirya Holman (of #MHAWS fame, which I know all of you are already reading) and I are co-hosting a writing retreat. In Atlantic City, in a gorgeous historical home that’s right on the beach, May 22-26, 2023. Details are here. Come rekindle your love for writing with an intensive, one-of-a-kind writing retreat experience! Goal setting! Meetings with an editor! Workshops on how to write more and be less miserable while you do it! The Jersey Shore! Community! So much time for writing! We expect this will fill up quickly, so if you’re interested apply soon!
Stepping outside of my comfort zone
My first book had a very typical trajectory: it was a dissertation, I defended my dissertation, rewrote it, submitted it to a publisher, it went through the review process and was published. I’m pretty sure 12 people read it, including my mom.
Wanting a more public-facing audience for my second book has meant re-learning a lot of things about how to write something that people want to read. I want to make sure that people like my writing.
My two oldest (we met on my sixth birthday!) and bestest friends who happen to be twins, and who work in musical theater on Broadway. One thing I’ve learned from them is the value of workshopping your craft. Plays go through endless revisions, including rewriting songs in the middle of rehearsal (and sometimes in the middle of performances). It’s a living process that I think we could learn from in academia.
So I call them up, and I asked them: if I bought a case of wine and a bunch of fancy cheeses and some desserts, could they find five or so people who would want to read an early draft of my book and talk about it? They said yes, so we’re throwing a little book party on February 27. I’m terrified, but also excited to hear what people think of my work in a lived space. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Sharing writing, not just the process or your ideas
Thinking about new ways of generating feedback leads to my question for the week: how often do you share your writing, not just your research, with other people? I get the sense that a lot of academics hide their writing until the last possible minute, which makes the writing process harder, longer, and more involved.
My sense is that humanities scholars do so more than social scientists, but that as a group we tend to workshop our ideas at conferences, and our writing process in accountability groups, but we don’t always create space or invite people in to critique our writing.
Assuming there’s value in creating writing that people want to read, how can we create space to share early drafts of your writing and get formative feedback and support? This is a question I’m thinking about, and I’d love to hear from you about what it looks like in your writing practice: do you have critique buddies? A writing circle that shares drafts? What works?
In sum
Can you find someone to share your writing with this week? Can you offer to read someone’s draft this week and let them know what’s going well in their writing?
Remember, if you want some friends to write along with you (and maybe who could become your beta readers) we’re doing the Let’s Write 10-day writing challenge Feb 27-Mar 10. You can sign up here.
And please, share the flyer and let your friends know about the writing retreat! Grab a co-author and apply to come write with us! It’ll really be an amazing experience, and we want you to be apart of it.
xoxoxo
Kelly