Writer Development: Guided Writing Retreats.

Cluster

Communication skills

Target group

PhD candidates from any discipline at any stage of completion can take value from the course: those early on in their studies can establish good habits from the outset, and those closer to completion can refresh or reconceptualise skills, giving them a boost in the final sprint. Having an interdisciplinary group underlines the commonalities of all researchers and their writing, regardless of disciplinary difference. This creates a broad community that can enhance everyone’s practice.

Lecturer

Dr. Sarah Haas undertook her PhD studies at Aston University in England. Her research focused on Writer Development (mainly applied linguistics, but also drawing on didactics and educational psychology). She teaches writing, and facilitates writer development workshops in Belgium, England, Denmark, Japan and the US. Dr. Haas has over 18 years of experience supporting research writers. She conducts practitioner-based research that aims to further improve the teaching of academic writing, and the facilitating of writer development.

Topic

Writer Development©: Person—Process—Product

Developing as a writer might seem like an impossible task to some of us who have to write as part of our jobs (researchers, for example). It is, however, entirely possible. Given good instruction, and practical tools based on solid research, any writer—experienced or new, passionate or reluctant—can surely get more writing done, get better writing done, and feel better about writing.

Writers can develop in three ways:

o  We can strive to improve the quality of our texts (Product)

o  We can strive to improve how we get writing done: more efficiently, more prolifically, more consistently, more comfortably (Process)

o  We can decrease our anxiety about writing, or reluctance toward writing; develop our self-awareness and self-efficacy; improve our relationships with being a writer, and with our own processes and products of writing (Person)

Balanced Writing Education
Many writing courses for research writers at the graduate/postgraduate level focus mainly, if not exclusively, on product. The process of writing, and the writer-as-person are often bypassed—or at best under-explored. The emphasis on product might be due to time constraints, or pressing needs for acceptable output. While understandable, this is an unbalanced view of the development of a writer, and will likely have only limited results in the long term.

The Writer Development© course touches on, and introduces research-based tools that writers can use for all three areas of development. We also explore the potential roles of AI in each area.

Guided Writing Retreats plus Writers’ Groups
The course is comprised of two guided, on-site, day retreats (9:00-16:00). The first retreat is two full days; the second retreat, taking places a few weeks later, is one day.

The retreats alternate interactive workshops and structured, focused writing time. In the workshops, participants will be introduced to research-based tools that they can put to immediate effective use in the writing sessions. The writing sessions are a space for participants to move forward on their current writing projects (no extra busy-work writing is assigned). Thus, it is expected that everyone will bring a project (or more). We take a wide view of what it means “to write”, so participants are encouraged to bring projects in any stage of completion: just starting out with an idea, drafting, or scrubbing up an almost-final draft.

In between the two retreats, participants will be guided in organising themselves into writers’ groups ,so that they can support each other in continuing the good habits they started developing on the first retreat. 

Time and Venue

Registration fee

Free of charge for members of the Doctoral School of Ghent University. The no show policy applies.

Registration procedure

Follow this link to register. 

Your registration will be confirmed by separate e-mail from the Doctoral School. Cancellation of your registration can only be performed by sending an email to doctoralschools@ugent.be.

Number of participants

Maximum 12

Language

English

Evaluation criteria (doctoral training programme)

100% attendance, active participation, keeping a writer’s log, forming and maintaining writers’ groups (must meet at least twice for at least two hours each time between the sessions).

After successful participation, the Doctoral School will add this course to your curriculum of the Doctoral Training Programme in Oasis. Please note that this takes up to one to two months after completion of the course.