We Help Writers Grow

At Writer Development, we offer workshops, courses, and writers’ retreats that help research writers of all levels advance in every aspect of development: Person, Process, and Product.

Whether you’ve deliberately chosen writing, or have fallen into it by accident, developing as a writer is entirely within your grasp. With useable tools based on solid research, and a knowledgable experienced guide, any writer—passionate or reluctant, seasoned or green—can most certainly get more writing done, get better writing done, and feel better about writing.

We Offer Balanced Writing Guidance

Many writing courses, and perhaps research writers themselves, focus development solely on improving written output. This is understandable. After all, it’s our end-products that the wider world sees (and judges). However, we know that writers get more and better long-term results when they also pay attention to the process of getting writing done, and to the wellbeing of person doing the writing. We give balanced writing guidance, tailored to your needs.

We Offer Balanced Writing Guidance

When we think about developing as a writer, it’s easy to focus mainly on improving written text. That the process of writing, or the writer-as-person is sometimes under-emphasised is understandable. After all, it’s solely our end-products that the wider world sees (and judges). However, we get more (and better) long-term results when we develop all aspects.

We offer a variety of options for balanced writing guidance. We will listen to you first before designing a workshop, course, or retreat that best suits your needs.

We make tools for writers

For over two decades we have been designing research-based tools to help writers de-mystify writing so they can feel better about it and be more in control of the process, resulting in both immediate and long-term benefits.

Person

Feel better about writing

Regardless of how we feel about writing right now, we can increase joy in writing, reduce anxiety, enhance self-awareness and self-confidence, and improve our relationships with writing and being someone who writes.

Process

Get more writing done

By understanding the way we operate as writers, we can optimise how we get writing done: we can be more focused and more productive; we can write more efficiently, more consistently, and much more comfortably.

Product

Get better writing done

Good writing might seem like something achievable only if it’s been coded into our DNA. Writing is, however, a learned, learnable skill. Not everyone will be a great writer, but that’s no big deal. We can all, if we choose to, develop into reasonably good writers.

Voices from Organisers

Writer Development is the healthy food and exercise equivalent to a writing lifestyle change. It's not the fad diet. You don't promise any magic results that might last a month, but then you are back to where you started. You give tools that can be used for a lifetime.

I think there is a huge [need] for writing courses that focus on neurodiverse academics. Your course structure already is spot on.

I didn't think it was possible to teach an old dog like me any new tricks. But these [tools] you have introduced to [my PhD students and me] have made me think in another way. Maybe they will make me write in another way.

The Writer Development [guided retreat] is one of our longest running and most popular courses...The course evaluations are ridiculously good.

The teaching style is very clever. The [tools] are presented in a way that makes them seem obvious. But obvious in the way that gravity is obvious because some really smart person figured it out. You never get the feeling that you are being "taught" anything. But you go away [from the course] knowing so much more than you did when you walked in.

We continue to recommend this course because it transforms how our researchers write. They leave with a stronger writer identity, and practical tools that help them organise their time and maintain focused, productive writing habits. Many come back again and again – describing the courses as incredibly useful.

I took this course over 10 years ago, and I still use the tools. I introduce them to my own PhD students, and recommend that they take the course too.