Skim-Friendly Overview:
Steady Strides is an 8-week summer writing container for faculty and graduate students beginning the first week of June 2026.
Weekly 3-hour facilitated co-writing sessions, 3 one-on-one coaching sessions, 3 on-demand unstuck sessions, a community of scholars, and The YCC Writing Retreat Academic Care Kit. Schedule built around your availability.
Enrollment is capped at 8 participants.
Steady Strides:
Make This the Summer Your Writing Actually Moves Forward
Are you ready for an entire summer of structured writing support, strategic coaching, and a community that holds you accountable with care—so September doesn’t arrive with the same unfinished projects and the same familiar regret?
You Already Know How This Summer Will Go.
The semester ends. You turn in grades. You close your laptop. And you think: finally. This is the summer everything changes.
You imagine weeks of uninterrupted writing time.
Articles drafted. Projects finished. Momentum restored.
But something predictable happens:
You crash. Not for a day or two—sometimes for weeks.
The exhaustion you’ve been outrunning since January catches up with you all at once.
By the time you feel ready to write, it’s mid-July. August is closing in. The calendar is tightening.
Those three expansive months of intellectual freedom have narrowed into a few fragmented weeks.
Again.
This is not a discipline problem. This is a pattern—one that repeats because the conditions haven’t changed, even though your calendar has.
Here’s What’s Actually Happening
You’re arriving at summer with the same exhaustion, the same lack of structure, and the same decision fatigue that made writing impossible during the semester.
The only difference is that you have fewer meetings.
But fewer meetings is not a writing strategy.
It’s just empty space—and empty space, without structure, fills itself with everything except the work that matters most to you.
Meanwhile, the internal monologue gets louder:
"I should be further along by now."
"Other people seem to manage this."
"Maybe I just need to try harder."
What if the real question isn’t how do I try harder, but what would happen if I stopped trying to do this alone?
What Past Participants Have to Say:
"Consistently showing up really changed my relationship to my writing. I would not have completed the article I was working on without this community."
Imagine sitting down to write on the first Monday of June—not with dread, not with guilt, not with the panicked energy of trying to catch up—but with clarity about exactly what you’re working on and why.
Imagine knowing, before you even open your laptop, which task matches your cognitive capacity today. Deep drafting for a sharp morning. Steady revision for a midweek afternoon. Low-lift formatting for a tired Friday. No guessing. No decision fatigue. Just a rhythm you can trust.
Imagine writing inside a room full of other scholars who are also doing the work, not performing productivity, just quietly, consistently showing up. The kind of accountability that doesn’t feel like surveillance. It feels like solidarity.
Imagine having a thought partner—someone who knows your research pipeline, your institutional dynamics, your cognitive patterns—available when you hit a wall.
Not next week.
Right now, in the session, when the wall is fresh and the momentum is still recoverable.
Imagine arriving at September with drafts submitted, projects advanced, and the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you actually did what you said you would do.
That’s not a fantasy. That’s what Steady Strides is designed to produce.
Introducing Steady Strides
An 8-week summer writing container for faculty and graduate students who are ready to stop carrying their writing alone—and start writing inside a structure designed to hold both the work and the person doing it.
Beginning the first week of June 2026—intentionally timed so you can rest, decompress, and recharge before pivoting into summer productivity. Your schedule. Your pace. Structured, supported, and sustainable.
This is for you if you are:
- A faculty member—tenure-track, tenured, teaching-focused, or contingent—who cares deeply about your scholarship but keeps losing it to everything else.
- A postdoc or advanced graduate student navigating competing demands on your time and energy.
- Someone who has tried to build a writing practice alone and found that willpower, calendars, and good intentions are not enough to sustain it.
- Someone who is tired. Not tired of the work — tired of doing it without support.
This space is especially for scholars who:
- Are overwhelmed by teaching and service;
- Feel politically or emotionally vulnerable in their writing;
- Want a sustainable writing rhythm;
- Are tired of writing alone;
- Need compassionate, culturally grounded support;
- Want to enter the fall semester with clarity and momentum.
What's Inside Steady Strides
- 8 weeks of 3-hour structured writing sessions
- Beginning the first week of June — rest and recharge first
- Schedule built around YOUR availability, not a fixed calendar
- Small cohort, intentional community
Weekly Facilitated Co-Writing Sessions
Every week for eight weeks, we meet for a three-hour facilitated co-writing session. You arrive with clarity about what you’re working on—because the Arrive Aligned method builds that clarity into the process.
You write in a virtual writing room with other scholars, with me holding the space.
Unlike other writing programs that give you a fixed calendar and say show up or miss out, Steady Strides meets you where you are.
When you enroll, I find a time that works for everyone in the cohort, and that becomes our weekly session. Your summer doesn’t bend around my calendar. We build it together.
The sessions include grounding, focused writing blocks, and a closing reflection so you leave knowing where to pick up next week. No scrambling. No starting from scratch.
Three One-on-One Coaching Sessions
60 minutes each — strategic thought partnership
Session 1: Beginning — clarify priorities and build your summer plan
Session 2: Midpoint — assess progress and recalibrate
Session 3: End — solidify momentum and plan for fall
Your pipeline, your institutional dynamics, your full landscape
Sometimes the reason you’re stuck has nothing to do with the paragraph in front of you. It’s that you have four competing projects and no clarity about which one deserves your attention.
Or you’re navigating a difficult institutional dynamic that’s quietly draining your energy.
The first session clarifies your priorities and builds your summer plan — not just a few projects, but your full landscape.
The second session at the midpoint assesses what’s working and recalibrates.
The third session solidifies what you’ve built and plans your momentum into the fall so September doesn’t undo what June and July created.
This is strategic thought partnership. The kind of support that most scholars tell me they wish their departments provided but never do.
Three On-Demand Unstuck Sessions
30 minutes each — use during any weekly writing session
For when you don’t know what to do or where to start
Thinking is part of writing — and you don’t have to do it alone
Show up even if you’re stuck—that’s what these sessions are for.
Sometimes you show up to write, and the problem isn’t energy or time or discipline.
The problem is that you’re just stuck.
You don’t know what the next move is.
You can’t figure out how to structure the argument.
You’re not sure if what you wrote last week is even going in the right direction.
Each person gets three 30-minute unstuck sessions to use during any weekly co-writing session. You raise your hand, we step into a breakout, and we think through whatever has you stuck — together, right then, while the work is fresh.
Sometimes, thinking is the most important step before writing.
Not every writing session produces words on a page.
Sometimes the breakthrough is realizing that you need to restructure a section, or that the argument you’ve been forcing isn’t actually the argument you’re making. That kind of clarity is worth more than a thousand words written in the wrong direction.
You don’t have to show up knowing exactly what to do. You just have to show up.
What's Included
Arrive Aligned Retreat Pre-Work
3 coaching sessions to clarify your priorities
3 1:1 thought partnership sessions to get unstuck
A small cohort with compassionate accountability
A writing rhythm you can use even after our sessions end
By the end of the summer, you will have:
Made consistent, meaningful progress on your writing—not in sporadic bursts of panic, but through steady, sustainable rhythm.
Submitted or significantly advanced at least one major project—because eight weeks of structured writing time produces real output, not just good intentions.
A clear understanding of your own cognitive patterns and research process —so the system you build this summer continues working after Steady Strides ends.
Experienced what it feels like to write inside support—where you feel respected, valued, and understood. You'll understand clearly why going it alone was never a sustainable strategy.
Arrived at September differently than you have in years.
Meet Your Facilitator
Brielle Harbin, PhD, is an educator, consultant, and former tenured faculty member who has spent her career helping scholars navigate the emotional, structural, and political realities of academic life.
She earned tenure while teaching a 3–3 load at a teaching-focused institution — producing 14 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, becoming the first pre-tenure scholar to earn the American Political Science Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and doing all of it with limited research support, heavy student-facing labor, and disproportionate service responsibilities.
She knows what it costs to keep showing up for your work inside a system that was not designed to support it.
As the founder of Your Cooperative Colleague LLC and creator of the Arrive Aligned™ writing method, Brielle now works with faculty and graduate students who are tired of working harder and ready to work differently. Her approach is grounded in a simple premise: the problem is rarely discipline. It’s almost always structure, conditions, and the invisible weight of everything you’re carrying before you ever sit down to write.
Steady Strides is built on that premise—and on the belief that clarity is not a luxury. It’s the thing that makes everything else possible.
Investment
- 8 weeks of 3-hour facilitated co-writing sessions — $3,500 value
- 3 x 60-minute one-on-one coaching sessions — $2,997 value
- 3 x 30-minute on-demand unstuck sessions — $1,125 value
- Working community of scholars
- Arrive Aligned™ pre-work method
- Schedule built around your availability
- The YCC Writing Retreat Academic Care Kit—handcrafted candles designed for academic writers, available exclusively to Steady Strides scholars — $60 value
Total Value: $7,682
You Pay: $5,000
or 3 monthly payments of $1,775
Professional development invoices available upon request. If you need language for your department chair or dean, I’m happy to help.
Cohort capped at 8 participants to honor intimacy, depth, and psychological safety.
What Past Participants Have to Say:
"Having structure and compassionate accountability boosted the rhythm of my work."
MyWriting Support Commitment
Attended all writing sessions and still feel disconnected from your writing? I will personally meet with you for a 30-minute Strategy Session (a $250 value) to serve as a thought partner who helps you regain writing clarity and momentum.
Let's Put This in Perspective
The average faculty member spends thousands of dollars each year on conferences, association memberships, and professional development that does not directly move their writing forward.
Steady Strides is $5,000 for an entire summer of structured writing support, strategic coaching, and a community built specifically to help you produce the scholarship that defines your career trajectory.
At three payments of $1,775, that’s the cost of one conference registration per month — except instead of returning with a stack of business cards and good intentions, you return to September with manuscripts submitted and momentum you can feel.
The question is not whether you can afford this. The question is what it costs you not to have this support for another summer.
If you're ready to enter summer 2026 with clarity, confidence, and momentum…
- If you want a writing space where you don't have to mask…
- If you want to feel held, grounded, and supported…
- If you want a writing rhythm that actually works in real academic life…
Frequently Asked Questions
Perfect. This retreat is designed for scholars writing through exhaustion. You don’t have to feel inspired; you only have to show up. The space is designed to hold you, however you arrive.
Writing groups rely on you to organize, motivate, and sustain your own participation. Steady Strides does that for you. The structure is facilitated. The sessions are held. The coaching is available. And the community is curated. You don’t manage the container—you just show up to write, and I take care of the rest.
After enrollment, participants complete a brief availability form. I find a time that works for everyone in the cohort, and that becomes our weekly session. Your summer doesn’t bend around my calendar—we build it together. If you need to miss a session occasionally, the structure is designed to hold your continuity—you won’t lose momentum from one missed week.
Steady Strides is open to all faculty and graduate students who resonate with the approach. My work is informed by the experiences of scholars who navigate disproportionate institutional demands — especially women of color, first-generation academics, and faculty at teaching-focused institutions — and that perspective shapes the care and intentionality of the container. If this resonates with you, regardless of your identity, you are welcome here.
Large-scale programs compete on volume and access—with institutional partnerships, the barriers to entry may feel lighter. Steady Strides competes on depth, personalization, and intimacy. The group size is kept intimate by design. You get one-on-one coaching with me. You get unstuck sessions where I sit with you in a breakout room and think through your specific problem. You get a schedule built around your availability, not a fixed institutional calendar. And you get a handcrafted care kit that signals this is not another productivity program—it’s a container designed for the whole scholar and their well-being.
Good. That’s exactly where we start. The Arrive Aligned pre-work helps you sort through the mess before the program begins. And the one-on-one coaching sessions give us dedicated space to work through the specific challenges of your project and pipeline. You do not need to arrive with clarity — you need to arrive willing to find it.
Because Steady Strides is a small, community-centered program with only 8 spots available, all sales are final and non-refundable. Your registration is a commitment—to yourself, your writing, and the group. This policy ensures that every space is filled with faculty who are ready to show up and contribute, creating the supportive, consistent environment that makes this experience so valuable.
Yes. Many faculty use professional development funds, research accounts, or start-up funds for this kind of investment. I provide professional development invoices upon request and am happy to provide language for your department chair or dean if that would be helpful.
Yes. If you attend all writing sessions and still feel disconnected from your writing, I will personally meet with you for a 30‑minute Strategy Session (a $250 value) and serve as a thought partner to help you regain clarity and writing momentum.
Yes. Book a call with me and we’ll talk through whether Steady Strides is the right fit for where you are right now. No pressure. Just clarity.
This Summer Can Be Different.
Not because you try harder. Not because you find more time. Not because you finally locate the discipline you’ve been told you’re missing.
Because you stop trying to do it alone.
Steady Strides is the structure. The community is the support. And I’m here to hold the space.
You just have to decide to walk in.
Don't delay, there are only 8 seats.
© 2026 Brielle Harbin. All rights reserved.