Summer WriteClub
Productive writing in balance with the rest of life

Online Coaching Programme

✍️  Establish strategies for productive writing practices in balance with the rest of your life

✍️ Build and sustain confidence, motivation and strategies to overcome barriers

✍️  Set writing goals that are meaningful, balanced, possible, and satisfying

✍️  Tap into ongoing peer support and learn from the collective wisdom of the group

✍️  Learn more about who you are as a writer

Whether an academic, a blogger or creative writer, Summer WriteClub is for anyone wanting to create a productive process of writing and establish a more effective, balanced writing experience.

Facilitated by Will Medd, a former academic who became a professional life coach, Will brings an intimate understanding of the experience of writing life, and a commitment to coaching with professionalism, emotional sensitivity, and humour. Will brings experience of working with writers of many kinds for over ten years.

Booking and Payments

Registration has now closed for Summer WriteClub 2024, but details of the  next programme will be available here as soon as they have been confirmed.

If you have any queries, please email [email protected] and we’ll be pleased to help!

Feedback from WriteClub members

  • “Amazing, inspirational, motivational and dare I say life-changing (and affirming).” Writer, Summer Write Club 2020

  • “Just thanks to Will and everyone else in the group for the supportive atmosphere, helpful suggestions and the ability to make even bad writing weeks seem much better after each call! I think my attitude towards writing has really shifted this summer, and become much healthier, and that’s had a big impact on my day-to-day work life.” Researcher, Lancaster University, 2017

  • “I’ve attended a few writing retreats with Will, and each reinforces/refreshes/refines my efforts. It’s invaluable.” Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University, 2018

How does WriteClub work?

Whether your diary has an ‘empty space’ which you plan to use for writing or it is filled with a to-do list within which writing is a squeeze, WriteClub will help you create a balanced, productive and satisfying approach to writing.

WriteClub works at three levels:

  1. Establishing an effective writing practice while getting writing done. Our method - WriteHere, RightNow offers a structure designed to enable you to write, to approach editing in an effective way, and to hold up a mirror to your own habits and strategies with a view to establishing an intentional approach that works to you.

  2. Sustaining motivation and overcoming barriers such as self-doubt and ‘the imposter’. In response to the challenges many participants find, group coaching engages with issues around core motivation, overcoming fear and insecurity, finding inherent confidence, and establishing effective intentions and goals.

  3. Who are you as a writer? A principle underlying the programme is to develop a better understanding of who you are as a writer, letting go of assumptions of who you are trying to be or thinking you should be. We work with what matters to you, with your strengths, with your vision of what your writing is for.

    Who is WriteClub for?

    WriteClub is designed to enable you to write. Will brings experience of coaching writers struggling whether with academic papers, novels, blogs, websites, books, and proposals. The programme is about enabling you to create a successful process of writing and establish a more effective, balanced and sustainable experience. 

    The WriteClub programme has been attended by researchers, lecturers, professors, creative writers, bloggers and PhD researchers, and has benefitted people from all backgrounds, from physicists to creative writers, sociologists to mathematicians.

      What's involved?

      Summer WriteClub has two stages, and is designed to adapt to the needs of participants.

        Stage one: WriteHere, RightNow one-day virtual retreat

        The day’s agenda includes:

        • Setting up: Introducing a coaching approach and the relationship between performance, potential and interference; sharing current experience of writing and how participants would like it to be; setting intentions.

        • Engagement: Developing an agreement amongst the group for the time together and establishing principles for writing, including: when it’s writing time, write; separate preparing, drafting and crafting; be curious with a beginner’s mind; warm up and warm down.

        • Live coaching experiments: Focused writing time paired with reflective exercises that lead to insights about process, challenges, successes, and self. Themes include: setting intentions; realigning vision and purpose; managing fear; being present; seeing mood as perspective; writing with joy, confidence, creativity, focus and rhythm.

        • Developing strategies and commitment: Applying the principles; incorporating new insights; setting the conditions; developing writing habits that sustain momentum; establishing individual goals for the writing period; creating peer-support systems for sharing progress.

          Stage two: fortnightly group coaching, weekly peer support and one-to-one coaching

          Following the retreat, participants put into practice their writing strategies and come together regularly to reflect on learning and write:

          • Group coaching (via Zoom): A fortnightly group coaching session offers a regular opportunity to reflect on progress. We adapt the topics to the themes that participants bring up in the reviews – examples have included staying motivated; pacing oneself; maintaining focus; setting reasonable goals; working with co-authors; and managing guilt, anxiety and lethargy.
          • Optional peer support: Participants have the option to support and learn from each other in small self-managed groups. Each group’s members will determine how they want to support each other. Options might include: weekly check-in; regular shared writing time (virtual); and a system of reward and challenge. Some people may want to exchange writing for feedback.
          • One-to-one coaching (via Zoom): You have the opportunity for a 25-minute one-to-one session around the mid-point of the programme and additional 1-1 support on an ad hoc basis as needed.
          • Fortnightly review: You are encouraged to keep a journal or your writing experience and each fortnight you’ll receive email support from Will in response to your journal.

          • Concluding group session: A final group session at the end of the programme creates space for reflecting on key lessons learned and how to take those forward into everyday practice.

          More feedback from WriteClub members

          • “An excellent experience, a journey of discovery and self-reflection. Not what I expected, it was much more than a writing course.” (Writer, Summer 2020)

          • “The meetings were incredibly useful for touching base with writing and sharing experiences with others, artfully facilitated by Will.” (Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University, 2018)

          • “I’ve learned so much more about what works for me, unpacked (negative) narratives I saw in my notes since 2017 (!!), and all of my writing projects have been transformed since the start of June to feel at least imminently doable or fun and exciting. I have no doubt this is thanks to your emphasis on self-care and work-life balance.” (Writer, Summer 2020)

          • “I stayed on target with my writing goals, and it enabled me to see quickly when I was slowing down and allowed me to get back on track more easily than otherwise would have been the case.” (Lecturer, Lancaster University, 2018)

          Will does write and has published in different formats – including two self-coaching books for students - however the strategies offered emerged more from the experience of people he has coached, including academics and creative writings.

          He is passionate about enabling people to be at their best while balancing work with the rest of life. Will is deeply committed to developing conditions of challenge and support which are conducive to all participants' engagement and learning. His sessions are regularly scored as ‘excellent’ and comments have included: “respectful, sensitive to needs of the group”, “fantastic, created a really safe atmosphere to expose the issues raised”, “excellent, very patient when dealing with quite a few of us, kept us on track”, and “exceptional – humane, forgiving, thoughtful and able to bring out the best in a diverse group.”

          You can find out more about Will at www.willmedd.com and www.writeclubcoaching.com

          © Will Medd 2024