We offer a variety of workshop formats, from short 1.5-to-2-hour programs and half-day, skill-building workshops around the world to weekend- and week-long intensives at our writing retreat house in the Catskill mountains of New York.
Here are the primary types of workshops we offer:
Short Formats Available in Cities Around the World
Freelance Travel Writing Master Class (for Experienced Writers)
This workshop is not just me talking at you about how to pitch, what editors are looking for, and how to make money from blogging. You probably already know everything that you need to know about those things.
What we are going to do is much more hands on.
We are going to look in naked, nitty gritty detail at exactly where your travel writing (or general freelance writing if you do more things but would like to transition to just travel) income is coming from, how you earn it, how you’d like to earn it, and what type of work you need to do and clients you need to work with to hit your big, fat, crazy income goal.
Get Published in Magazines Now! (for Beginning Freelancers)
In the Get Published in Travel Magazines Now! Workshop, you’ll learn the all the most important tricks of professional travel writers:
- the magazine landscape and the best places for you to break in, even if you’ve never been published before
- what travel magazine editors really want—and exactly how to give it to them
- how to break your trips into story ideas and match them to magazines
- a verifiable way to come up with solid story ideas editors will love
- how to write pitch emails that editors respond to—in just 15 minutes (including research)
Weekend and Week-long Formats at Our Private Retreat Center
Pitchapalooza
Pitching is the single best way to up your portfolio and income; get all of your questions answer and 25 ideas workshopped into polished pitches. If you know you can write and get good feedback from the editors you’re already working with but are having trouble moving up to bigger and better markets and stories, this event is for you.
Full schedule and more information.
IdeaFest
Whether you’re brand new to freelance writing, have a blogging background, or are coming to travel writing from another type of freelance writing, this weekend workshop is designed to make sure that you never run out of the travel writers’ most important currency: article ideas that are laser focused and a perfect fit for the magazine you’re pitching. As you learn how to become an idea machine and walk away with 100 ideas matched to magazines, we’ll discuss how to find and formulate ideas whether you’re on the road or cooped up at home with nothing to inspire you but the internet, and you’ll see how to take any one kernel of an idea and reshape and slant it for dozens of magazines.
Full schedule and more information.
TravelContentCon
From who to target and how to reach them to building pitches and proposals and setting up your site for success with content marketing clients, we’ll set up you entire infrastructure for building travel content marketing gigs in one weekend through a mix of small group sessions, work time to put together your portfolio, pitch, and packages, and one-on-one coaching and work reviews.
Full schedule and more information.
Weeklong Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp
A brand new offering unlike any other travel conference or workshop aimed at those new to publishing their travel writing in print publications. Running from Sunday evening through the following Saturday afternoon, each morning we’ll cover idea generation, research techniques, and pitching fundamentals in group lessons, one-on-one coaching, and exercises, and in the afternoon we’ll head out to visit wineries, native plant nurseries, celebrated hiking trails, and historic sites from the dawn of the nation to put your new skills to use in the field, followed by a debrief over dinner.
In addition to walking away with the tool kit you need to pitch, research, and write travel articles, you’ll also leave with a personal plan to grow your travel writing income and portfolio and transition into full-time freelance travel writing if you’re currently in another career.
Full schedule and more information.
If there is one of the shorter workshops that you are interested in having where you live that is not on the schedule, let us know and we’ll look into scheduling one!
Check out our event page for links to specific upcoming or past events for more specifics.
Interested in one-on-one coaching to reach your travel writing goals?
We offer two levels, depending on whether you need to go from zero to sixty quickly or just need some continuous course corrections to what you're already doing to make sure you stay on track to hit big, amazing goals.
Pop your email address below and the next time the programs open, you'll get a short series of emails on how our program is set up, what, and what you can get out of it.