About the retreat
True North retreats provide an immersive experience for students and tutors alike. They combine teaching in the form of group sessions and personalised individual tutorials with a strong emphasis on peer learning. They are intensive, creative and transformative: time and again, we find these retreats generate accelerated learning, filling students with confidence and purpose.
This four-day immersive retreat Led by James McConnachie draws on the editorial process as practiced by professional editors. You will learn how to step outside your own work – to view it with a cool editorial eye that lets you lift your writing to a new level. There will be taught group sessions on three of the four mornings, in which the tutor will cover a wide range of editorial know-how, from cultivating the right mindset for editing to high-level proof-reading skills. In the afternoons, you will have time and space to work on your own writing and ideas. In addition, you will receive a one-hour 1-1 tutorial that will focus exclusively on your thesis, and there will be opportunities for optional evening Q&A sessions. One day will be a fully immersed writing day.
By the end of the retreat participants will have:
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Learned how professional editors approach a text and in what ways they intervene, and acquired tools for better copy-editing and proofing.
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Understood the role and value of each distinct stage in the redrafting and editing process.
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Discovered what to cut and what to boost in order to turn their thesis into a coherent work that sings.
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Learned how and where to place their most far-reaching ideas, so the work resonates with meaning for readers.
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Experienced the transformative benefit of immersion – away from the distractions of everyday life, and in the company of a peer group of students who are on the same journey.
Ahead of the retreat the tutor will request 3,000–4,000 words as a writing sample – perhaps from a problematic or draft chapter: the one that doesn’t fit, that’s much too long, that somehow isn’t working as it should. The tutor will read this extract before you meet, and there will be an opportunity to discuss it together in detail in the tutorial, focusing not so much on the scholarly contribution but on the writing itself.
Participants should bring a laptop and a copy of their writing sample, and the whole chapter it comes from.
To Register:
We will notify you via email when booking is open for this retreat. Once available. please book your place via Inkpath as soon as possible. Places are likely to fill up very quickly so we encourage early registration
