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
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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 care. And then we’ll conclude with Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s memoir, Shanda — a memoir of shame and secrecy. “Shanda” is Yiddish for shame. I won’t spoil what she is ashamed about. You can read that in the book. But these three books will be the focus of my comparative literature course through the 92nd Street Y. I really hope you’ll join me for that.
This coming Wednesday, the 30th of September, will be a Live Storytelling Tips and Tricks discussion. Our guest will be Derek Schneider, who’s this wonderful guy from Wichita Falls, Texas, who recently invited me to headline a brand new storytelling festival that he launched. And, it got me thinking: It’s not that hard to put something like this together, and the impact and the ripple effect is... WOW. On Wednesday, October 14th, we’ll hear from Andi Penner , who’s a first-time memoirist navigating the maze of the submissions process. And so if you’re a bit lost in that maze, too, or feeling overwhelmed by it, come and listen to Andi and hear what she’s done, what’s worked, what hasn’t, as well as advice about what to focus on and what NOT to waste your time on during the submissions gauntlet. Andi WILL get her book published. I want to hear from her before she hits it big!
And all of you have that potential to do that too, those of you who are writing memoir. It can be daunting, absolutely, keep using the word overwhelming, but it really, really is. And so you’ll find comfort and community in hearing Andi talk. If you can, if you’re in the Chicagoland area, tonight my friend and client Mary Leopold will be featured on CBS2 Chicago News. She’s the mother of a wonderful young boy, Oliver Leopold, who passed away at the age of 19 in 2021. Mary’s written an incredible memoir called The Landscape of After: A Therapist’s Memoir of Moving Through Grief. Mary will be featured on CBS2 Chicago tonight because of her efforts to bring a Wind Phone here to our hometown of Evanston, Illinois. It’s a phone that’s not hooked up to anything. You walk into it, pick up the receiver, then talk to the person (or people) you’ve lost… who you’re missing… who you’re longing for. The idea is that your voice carries on the wind to that person. You’re not speaking directly to them, and yet you are. I’m certain Mary’s efforts will inspire so many other people to do something similar in their communities, because openly expressing our grief is so good for us. We don’t do enough of that. Our grief is often so hidden. And as you’ll see, I’m frequently rushing to talk to people about grief because I’m dealing with it, too. Mary Leopold will be a guest during the 10/21 Grief Huddle, and I really hope you’ll join us. If you haven’t been touched by grief, you are so lucky. Sadly, it WILL come for you, too. So, preparing ourselves for it and embracing the grief experience is, I think, an important life skill.
Here’s the 9/23/26 segment on CBS2 Chicago about the Wind Phone Mary and her family brought to our town:
On October 28th, Nadia Bowers, the author of Dear Dealer, will speak with us in a Huddle about writing about her sister’s overdose death. If you haven’t heard her This American Life segment called Dear Dealer, I highly recommend checking it out. On November 10, I’ll join Keir Graff, Sharon Woodhouse, and Barry Pearce for a panel discussion on ghostwriting. How did we get into it? What kind of money do we make? What are the tips and tricks we use to help others write their stories? Click here for more details about this 11/10 event, sponsored by Publishing Cocktails and hosted by After-Words Books in Chicago (doors 6p; program at 7p).
Pastor Laura O’Brien will be our Craft guest November 11th, discussing her incredible memoir, HELL Hope on Wheels. Laura is a self-described foul-mouthed Lutheran pastor who wrote this cheeky, honest, brave book about survival and navigating grief. I can’t wait to talk to her.
I’ll be talking here on Huddles on November 18th with Tom Zuba about his two books, Permission to Mourn: A New Way to Do Grief, as well as his latest release, Becoming Radiant: A New Way to Do Life Following the Death of a Beloved. Tom’s got such an incredible story. He lost two of his children and his wife to various circumstances — and he’s still standing and writing about navigating the aftermath of loss. I’m so looking forward to that conversation.
On December 9, we’ll hear from Heather Sweeney author of Camouflaged: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage. Heather Sweeney is also the publisher of the awesome Substack Days Like This. I’ve become a recent fan of Heather’s and all the brave work she does.
Okay, what else? What else?
That’s a lot of opportunities to work together and connect!
If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed or lost in the process of writing (or considering writing but not even knowing where to begin), these Huddles are for YOU.
If you’re looking for inspiration or clarity or some sort, I GET IT. I remember thinking when I started out writing how desperate I was for someone to give me a roadmap. Where do I start? How do I avoid all the rabbit holes? What I’ve learned is that you just start where you are, and to embrace those rabbit holes!
If you’re writing memoir or personal essays, I recommend Facebook’s Binders Full of Memoirists, run by the amazing Allison K Williams. The number of people in there who are published, dabbling, and everything in between is such a balm for my heart. It’s a group filled with people who’ll cheer for you, who’ll answer your questions, who’ll give it to you straight, and who’ll help you sell and promote your work once it’s been published.
Also, check out Ronit Plank's Let’s Talk Memoir. I can’t say enough about the way she approaches the memoir genre or the guests she brings on. Her conversations are always so inspiring and help me to feel seen. Whether you like to read or write memoir, you’ll learn so, so much from Ronit and her guests.
I feel like I MUST bring up the whole recent debacle at the White House regarding the press ban of CNN, MSNOW and Politico… and describe how an effort to silence someone just because you don’t like how they talk about your practices is ludicrous. Thank you, Julie Snider, for chiming in about Banned Books Week (October 4th through October 11th), and for recommending Pen America for info, inspiration, and news. Thank you. Yes, when we talk about banned books in the same vein of silencing, it’s laughable. As soon as we’re told not to talk about something (or cover something), what do you think we want to do? There’s actually a name for that madness: It’s called psychological reactance. Jack Brehm first described it in 1966. When someone limits our freedom, we feel an instinctive push to take that freedom back, because the forbidden thing starts to look way more appealing.
There’s also the forbidden fruit effect (the idea that banning something makes it more desirable), the Streisand effect (the concept that trying to suppress information draws more attention to it), and ironic process theory (trying not to think about something only makes you think about it more — also called the “white bear problem,” as in “Think of anything EXCEPT a white bear…”).
These same concepts apply to mental illness challenges, addiction, homelessness, war, racism… I could go ON. Giving language to these topics is uncomfortable-yet-healthy for us, and I’ll scream this until the day I die. I teach expressive writing for emotional healing in every space I can, and I’m always looking for new places to teach it. It’s so important to give language to the hardest things in our lives. This isn’t just my opinion: It’s science. It’s so good for us to write about our most upsetting, cringey, awkward, overwhelming experiences. Doing so helps us sleep better. It lightens our working memory so we can focus on other things, healthier things, and on the people we love.
Welcome to my TED talk, lol.
I’m so deeply grateful for this community and for what this group of subscribers and followers is doing.
Not only for me, but most of all for you, for each other. I’m seeing people connect with each other, being resources for one another in the comments, in the posts, in the restacks, in the shares. So please keep that going. And it’s only going to get stronger and stronger.
I think we’re now a community of more than 3000 subscribers — and growing.
I’ll end once again by saying that if you would like to take advantage of the benefits of a paid subscription to this Substack, everything is 50% off through Sunday. And I’m not broadcasting this. This is a special deal for those of you showing up for these Huddles. Thank you!
I’m so grateful to see you all here. And whether you’re here live or watching this recording, I hope you connect with each other. In the comments below, PLEASE tell us about your own Substack, your own website, your own recently published piece. Share your work with us and help us find more voices to connect with!
Thanks so much for joining this week’s Huddle. I hope you found something useful and inspiring!
Talk to you soon!
Christine
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
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