It was with excitement that I set off with a colleague to
attend this writer’s retreat. Having not attended anything like this before I
did not know what to expect. We have been given a list of aims of the retreat
and the format of how the days would be run.
When I first scanned the format I thought well we are going
to be doing a lot of eating, writing, talking and then writing eating and
talking some more! We had to take along something that we had already been
working on for further development into something that could be published.
I can say that I was impressed with the location selected as
I had stayed there previously and thought that it would be very conducive to a
writing focus.
The aims of the retreat were achieved one hundred percent!
The other participants were friendly and sharing of both their skills and
experiences as well as their perceived shortcomings. I think that some of the
attendees were selling themselves short at the beginning, but by the end of the
retreat walked away with confidence in their ability to complete and publish an
academic paper lifted. We learned how to target a journal suitable for our work
and to write to that journal, what to do with reviewer comments and feedback
and much more.
The learning environment was an informal style suited to
health professionals and was passed on by the facilitators who told of their
own experiences while learning and writing, and how their writing had helped
others. The message was clear that there is no point in researching and
learning if the knowledge gained was not shared to enable it to be put to use
by others. As a Librarian I know that there are many people who present at
conferences and never write up their research. How do I know this? It’s because
others find the abstracts or posters, are interested in the work and ask me to find the paper that came
from it. The number of times I have to tell them that there is no paper
is almost unbelievable. Sometimes I think that people think I just can't find it but, trust me!... I'm a Librarian.
I would not hesitate to recommend this retreat to anyone interested in pushing themselves into taking that step to publish. There is another Writer's Retreat coming up in June from 26th to 28th. There are limited places available. Contact Alycia Jacob for further information Alycia.Jacob@newcastle.edu.au
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