Thanks to everyone who tuned in to this week’s live video! Find the transcript from today’s News & Inspiration Huddle below — with links included! Click here to learn more about my upcoming weekly Writers’ Haven Huddles.Click here to watch recordings of past Huddles.We gather every Wednesday on Substack Live at Noon Central for a conversation designed to enhance your writing life.First Wednesday: Ask Me AnythingSecond Wednesday: CraftThird Wednesday: GriefFourth Wednesday: News & InspirationFifth Wednesday: Live Storytelling Tips & Tricks What’s A Writers’ Haven Huddle?Click Here. Want to suggest a guest or a topic? Writers’ Haven Huddles: Free Gatherings Every Wednesday at Noon Central on Substack Live Welcome to this week’s Substack Huddle. Every Wednesday we gather here for anywhere from a 30-minute to a one-hour gathering. These huddles are free, and each Wednesday we switch to a different topic. And I welcome you as you all gather here, whether you’re watching it live or not. Thank you for being part of this. The intention of these Huddles is just to create more space for all of us to connect. And feel free to drop comments, questions, and links into the chat. I’ll do my best to share those in the post I create once I get the recording, so we can share each other’s questions, good news, links, things to celebrate, struggles — all of it. And each week we rotate with a different kind of topic. So this week is News and Inspiration. And this is the, what is this now? Is this the... Goodness, is this the fourth week of the month? How is that POSSIBLE? If you’re new here, WELCOME! I’m Christine. I’m a trauma-informed memoir coach and developmental editor. I’m the founder of Writers’ Haven Literary Center in Evanston, Illinois, and the Center for Shared Grief. I teach expressive writing and memoir courses and workshops at Northwestern University’s Norris Center, as well as through my website. And I publish Writers’ Haven by Christine Wolf here on Substack. On the first Wednesday of every month, we do an Ask Me Anything. So if you have questions about writing a book, putting a book together, taking a kernel of an idea and asking yourself whether or not it’s worth turning into a book, all of those sorts of things. All these questions can feel so overwhelming and leave you paralyzed with indecision. This is a great place to just dump your questions, so ask me! I’m constantly answering these kind of questions all the time with my clients, so I’d love to answer them for you, as well. So, the first Wednesday of every month is an Ask Me Anything. The second Wednesday of every month is focused on Craft. On those Wednesdays, I usually bring in a guest who has either come out with a memoir or a book, or is doing some sort of creative work or a literary-adjacent project. Last week—well, the last two Wednesdays —we’ve had incredible, absolutely incredible guests. The first Wednesday of Craft, we had Rebecca Morrison, who wrote The Blue Dress. And last Wednesday, we were so lucky to have Maureen Walgren, whose book about her son, Corey, Invisible Threads, was just—both of those discussions were incredible. So that’s the second Wednesday of every month. On the third Wednesday of every month, we focus on Grief. And again, we bring in guests. We talk about grief, and we take it out of the shadows, give it language, give it air, give it space to breathe. You’re part of all of these conversations. You don’t ever have to get on camera. Just drop comments, questions, thoughts, links into the comments. And then the fourth Wednesday of every month is we focus on News and Inspiration. So I guess today IS the fourth Wednesday. Gosh, it’s been a month, let me tell you. So today’s focus is on News and Inspiration, and we’ll get to that in one second. But when we’re lucky enough to have a fifth Wednesday of a month, we focus on Live Storytelling Tips and Tricks. As some of you know, I’ve done the Moth and many other live storytelling events, which I absolutely love. They really kind of force you to distill down a subject or a concept into its tightest form. And it’s a great way, even if you’re working on a larger project, especially a book, to really kind of get to the core of what you’re trying to say. I also talk about my own experience of live storytelling as another sort of extension of writing. I just want to stress that this is really for you. If you’re feeling less than inspired right now — or feeling frustrated or stuck or overwhelmed with a writing project, I get it. These endeavors can feel so isolating. I’ve been there, and I continue to be there. Shhh! Get 50% Off a Paid Subscription Through Sunday! This Substack, Writers’ Haven by Christine Wolf, is free. And, if you decide to use the paid tier, I have some really good news. Today through Sunday, I’m offering 50% off my typical rate of $12 a month or $75 a year. I’ve slashed that to 50% off, and I’m not advertising it. And I think the founding membership is typically $100 a year, and that is dropped down to $60. So this is exclusive to anyone who’s partaking in this Huddle. But why would you even want to pay for this newsletter? I’m glad you asked. Paid subscribers get access to my weekly write-ins, which are essentially accountability gatherings where we all write quietly together through a Zoom link. You show up, I show up. Nobody has to talk. Nobody has to share. It’s scheduled time where you know that somebody’s got their eyes on you. You don’t even have to put your camera on. Anybody who’s a paid subscriber gets the link to these write-ins that I hold on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays at various times so you can fit something into your schedule and just GET YOUR BUTT IN THE CHAIR and write. I need to schedule these for myself, and I want you to be part of it too. Paid subscribers also get sneak peeks of my memoir in progress, as well as your name on the Supporters’ Page once the memoir is published (it’s my way of thanking you for supporting me through this process). You also get discounts on classes that I offer through Writers’ Haven. That’s 50% off through Sunday of this week. So, jump on it while it lasts! Join Me for an Upcoming Event, Workshop, or Class October 4th at 6 p.m. at People’s Book in Tacoma Park, Maryland. We’ll be talking with Alice Stephens, who’ll be moderating, and then the editor of the book, B.K. (Kate) Jackson, as well as Laura Jenkins , my fellow contributor, will be talking about family secrets and the fallout of writing about things that are “best left unspoken”. It’ll be a lovely, robust, interesting conversation. I’m also teaching this 6-Week, In-Person Memoir Course at Northwestern University’s Norris Center. And worry not, there are lots of virtual options, as well!There’s a Six-Week Online Lunchtime Journaling Workshop from October 15th through November 19th. You can do that from the comfort of your home. It’s one hour at lunchtime. We dabble in all sorts of tips and techniques for kickstarting or increasing the productivity of your journaling practice. It’s a great way to be with other people and learn some techniques that’ll sustain you and help you if you want to turn out some pages for a larger project. I also have an in-person Expressive Writing for Emotional Healing workshop at Northwestern and that’s on Saturday, October 17th from 1 until 4 p.m. I’m also offering a Set Up Your Substack Bootcamp. I know I needed this. It’s a “How to do Substack” — helping you get set up, understand what it is, what you “need” to do, and what you can skip for now. To be sure, Substack can feel so paralyzingly overwhelming when you get started, and there’s a steep initial learning curve, but I’ve been on it for the last five years, and I’ve found a lot of little tips and tricks along the way — many of them from mentors and helpers, and now I’d love to pass them on to you. So the Set Up Your Substack Bootcamp will be in person at Northwestern University on November 7th from 10 until 3. Also, I’ll be on a Ghostwriting Panel with Keir Graff and some other amazing ghostwriters. It’s produced through Keir’s organization, Publishing Cocktails, hosted by After-Words Books in Chicago on November 10th. If you’ve ever been interested in ghostwriting or are curious about maybe hiring a ghostwriter for your own work, please. This is a wonderful in-person conversation. It’s free. And Kier Graff does amazing things with Publishing Cocktails. He goes all around the Chicagoland area doing literary events. If you see one come across your feed, run to it. And then finally, I’ll be teaching an Eight-week Virtual Comparative Literature Workshop through the 92nd Street Y (link coming soon!). They have an online learning platform called Roundtable, and I’ll be teaching a workshop called Writing Secrecy and Truth in Contemporary Memoir. We’ll focus on three amazing memoirs. The first will be @Nadia Bowers’ brand new memoir called Dear Dealer, her memoir about losing her sister Sasha to an accidental overdose. This is something I’ve personally gone through, so I’m devouring this book. I’m taking tons of notes, and Nadia will be a guest during my class. We’ll focus on this book first, and then we’ll shift to Meg Kissinger’s seminal book on family secrets, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence. Meg was a panelist on an AWP panel I moderated in Baltimore last year. She talks about losing not one, but two siblings to suicide — both of whom struggled with severe mental illness — and the secrecy and shame that surrounded those deaths. Using her journalistic chops, Meg also interrogates the mental health system in America: why it’s broken, how it got to be broken, and what we can do to help change the future of mental health
