Apr 17 2026

Less is More: How to Scale Back Our Manuscript Goals & Still Do Good Work

Writing Development

April 17, 2026

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM (CT)

Location

Room 1-470, Daley Library

Calendar

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We know we can’t meet that deadline. And yet, we commit to it anyway. Hoping that somehow, we’ll find a way. Or worse, already knowing that we’ll binge writing our way through, even though it will take weeks to recover. This workshop offers an alternative approach. It explains why it’s so hard to scale back our vision for a manuscript and teaches a straightforward way to do so anyway, while still retaining the quality of the work. Bring a manuscript with a deadline, and you’ll learn to identify which goals can be eliminated, which must be met, and how to become comfortable with your choices. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have a set of manageable writing goals and be able to confidently reduce the scope of work on any manuscript submission.

This is an in-person event.

Registration is limited to the UIC community.

RSVP here

Contact

IRRPP Staff
irrpp@uic.edu

Date posted

Sep 25, 2025

Date updated

Mar 4, 2026

Speakers

Michelle Boyd | Inkwell Retreats

Michelle Boyd, PhD is the founder of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats, a transformative, retreat-based training program that teaches scholars to overcome their writing fears. She is also a self-described “struggling writer” whose success as an award-winning, former tenured faculty member belied the challenges she faced throughout her career as an academic. Scholars who work with Michelle call her coaching “magical,” but it’s not magic—it’s science. Her coaching programs are rooted in research showing that each scholar has their own natural writing process, and that many of their struggles come from external barriers that prevent them from recognizing, accessing, or trusting that process when they need it. Michelle has been leading retreats since 2012, when she co-founded and coached her first retreat as a faculty member. The only thing she loves more than writing is helping scholars who dread writing develop a calm, confident, productive writing practice. Her latest book Becoming the Writer You Already Are (SAGE 2022) examines why writing is so challenging and how academics can rely on their writing process to find solutions to those challenges.