Radical Revision is an intensive retreat for writers who are ready to bring their manuscript (book, chapbook, long-form essay or story, any work-in-progress) to the next level. This retreat offers thoughtfully structured, highly engaged individualized feedback workshops for every writer in attendance, as well as inspiring craft sessions and inventive generative exercises, all carefully scaffolded to bring out the best in your work-in-progress while setting you up for your best writing long after the retreat is over.

Elephant Rock writing retreats are highly unique. People tell us year after year that no matter how many writing workshops or retreats they’ve attended, Elephant Rock is different. We build creatively intense spaces that are also deeply nurturing. This helps to open and challenge every writer at every level to go further into the work, see new angles, discover sharper facets. Our intentional workshops lead you toward unfolding and connecting, discovering and uncovering. We use precise writing exercises to guide us to the page in ways we never imagined. Language comes alive again, grows more elastic and expands with possibility. And we take your work as seriously as we take our own. Many writers find this work life-changing.

This retreat is held at the gorgeous, secluded Present Moment in Ixtapa, Mexico. Present Moment, nestled right on the edge of the Pacific, is one of the world’s top 25 wellness centers. This exclusive oceanfront boutique hotel and yoga retreat is situated on a quiet, serene beach in Troncones, thirty minutes up the coast from Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo, Mexico. This center offers a breathtaking setting with wellness classes, yoga by the sea, meditation, qigong, dance classes, spa treatments, as well as local adventures such as sunset horseback riding, eco tours, waterfall hiking, kayaking, surf-yoga excursions, surf lessons, and exploring the village.

During our retreat, morning writing workshops free up your thinking about words and loosen the binds on your creative process in unexpected ways. Your inner critic will fall away as you surrender to your innate ability to imagine the unknown. Afternoon revision circles bring our attention and devotion to each other’s manuscripts, offering the opportunity for illumination and transformation.

With the ocean as our backdrop, we will make full use of our environment to infuse our writing with what can only be found where we are. Writing workshops will include innovative writing exercises that engage powerful aspects of writing craft, including the senses, imagery, dialogue, and sound, among others. Craft sessions will provide a space to talk shop and seek advice on specific projects as well as universal challenges of the writing life. Student readings will cap off this rigorous, celebratory retreat.

You will also end the week with seedlings of new work in hand as well as substantial progress toward a revision of your work in progress. You can also expect to come away with many new inroads to your creative practice as well as an array of new craft tools and insights to apply to your work after the retreat is over. Our creative work will be supported by daily yoga and meditation structured specifically to foster and support creative synergy. As you connect your body, mind, and senses through movement and stillness, you release tension and cultivate insight and balance. Ultimately, you hear your own fierce, original voice again, and find exciting new portals through which you can bring that voice to the page.