Photo by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash

If you’re in the U.S., I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend!

In France, they call this time of year the réentrée. It’s when people return from their idyllic French summers in their country homes or those of their friends (you know, the A Year in Provence life we have all dreamed of at one point). Children get ready for school. And the combination of cooling weather and shorter days subconsciously make us begin preparations for the coming bleakness of winter.

For travel writers, however, fall has the cheerful advantage of being the time we pitch stories to magazines or next spring and summer, as we’re always living in the future due to the rhythm of the printing press and its deadlines.

In that vein, I’ve already set up our calendar for travel, workshops, and weeks open for our $150/week individual creative residencies, and I feel silly keep those dates from you, as I know many have already asked me when the next batch of retreats will be, because they couldn’t make the dates this summer or fall work.

So, exclusively for subscribers, I’m offer a “summer’s last hurrah” discount for next year’s retreats. Snag a spot in any of our four flagship programs for $150 off regular pricing:

  • TravelContentCon – Friday, January 12 – Sunday, January 14: 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. We’re scheduling this in January so that you can hit the ground running at the beginning of the year when companies and tourism boards are beginning to push full-steam on their content marketing before the summer booking begins.
  • Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp – Sunday, February 4 – Saturday, February 10: 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 on tours 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 person plan to grow your travel writing income and portfolio and transition into full-time freelance travel writing if you’re currently in another career.
  • IdeaFest – Friday, March 16 – Sunday, March 18: 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.
  • Pitchapalooza – Friday, April 13 – Sunday, April 15: 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. This is one of the best and most beautiful times of year at the retreat center, with the garden chock full of fresh tomatoes for ever meal and perfect weather to take lessons and individual writing time outside.

These prices are only available for subscribers, so if you aren’t already on the list to receive travel writing jobs in your inbox and invites to our free, weekly one-hour travel writing video courses, sign-up now:

 

Please note: Exclusive subscriber early bird prices available through September 15. This opportunity to take more than 25% of our retreats won’t be available at anytime after midnight EST on September 15.