Introducing The Chain

I want you to write fearlessly with me over six weeks this summer

✨#18 Rising and Global Top 100 Substack Publication✨

Asking “What Now?" as we rattle roughshod over the peaks and troughs of perimenopausal post-therapy midlife.

Facilitating your therapeutic journaling + memoir-writing journey in joyous community.

Hi friends,

I told you the other day I’ve been sitting with a new idea which I’m getting more excited about. It’s come from noticing the richness of the comment sections on my and other life writers’ posts each week and the new ideas for writing that are seeded in them. At the same time, I’ve been curious about what happens when we simply play on the page; challenge our tolerance for imperfection (see last Sunday’s post for more on this); riff on ideas / themes / forms and just see what comes. Remember Rick Rubin’s words?

“The work unfolds as you go.”

Well, I want to know what work might unfold as we go.

Introducing The Chain…

Yes, like the song. Like the BBC 6 Music feature you might hear on your radio each weekend morning. The Chain is a six-week-long experiment of co-creation where — this July and August — we take a creative leap of faith to write together. We’ll work quickly — with ferocity and charge — in six live Sunday night sessions to produce up to six slices of personal narrative each.

The Chain is for you if…

• You’re struggling to generate new ideas for your life writing

• You enjoy using others’ writing as prompts

• You love discussing the craft of memoir

• You work best in community with an element of accountability

• You want to challenge perfectionism in the work you share

• You have ambitions to create a body of work and want a manageable way to kickstart it

• You’d like the chance to be edited by me and have your work published here to my readership of 2K+ subscribers

Imagine getting to the end of August having met the challenge to create your own collection of six pieces. Pieces you might polish up, redraft or develop or even use as material for your own publications at the project’s end. If you don’t yet write for a readership, this project offers the opportunity to write for mine.

How will it work?

It starts with one piece of life writing published here on the first Sunday in July. Writers in The Chain will read that piece then meet online for an hour that evening to share reflections and chat about memoir and creativity before setting off for 40 minutes to craft a brand new piece of writing that speaks in some way to the prompt piece. It doesn’t continue the narrative: the prompt sparks you to write from your experience.

“Reading someone else’s words before I write always stirs something new in me… Someone else’s words awaken a different train of thought; a new energy. A synapse fires that, moments earlier, was dead asleep.”

Suleika Jaouad

, The Book of Alchemy

Then it’s up to you. You’re welcome to keep what you write to yourself or you can submit it there and then at the end of the hour in the comments (which are closed to the Membership, so the whole internet isn’t reading!).

The first draft is a level playing field.

In those short submissions, I’ll be looking for the next week’s prompt piece. A spark of something that will offer writers in The Chain the next, rich opportunity to respond. The chosen piece will then benefit from a light edit from me and one final pass from the writer before it’s published to my full subscriber list the following Sunday.

After which we begin again…

I’m so excited to imagine how these pieces might speak to one another. How they’ll look and feel alongside one another, each another link in the chain…

I’m thinking about the power of co-creation. The magic of writing on the fly. The confidence that writing together affords us. Letting the first idea be the best one. Trusting the creative process and writing into uncertainty. Without a plan.

I’m imagining we can aim to write a vignette each in our Sunday evening sessions. A scene that might play with form, genre, voice. A slice of life that forms an impression. It doesn’t need a beginning, middle and end. In it, you'll dip us into your internal logic and landscape then haul us out again before we get too deep.

“Sharing art is the price of making it. Exposing your vulnerability is the fee. Out of this experience comes regeneration. Finding freshness in yourself for the next project and all the ones to follow.”

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

In each of the weekly live sessions, I’ll offer some facilitation the likes of which I share in my other expressive writing courses. Writers don’t have to come to each session but this is the best way to get six pieces of writing done across the six weeks.

Each published writer benefits from feedback on their writing and the gift of an extra year in the Membership that they can use themselves or share with a friend.

The Chain is open to annual and founding Members so if you’ve been considering upgrading this is a great time to do it. Lock in a year in the Membership for £50 plus the entire archive, my memoir, comments, my courses and our monthly group chat. Speaking of which…

What Now Group Chat TONIGHT 8-9pm BST

All that’s left for me to remind you of tonight’s What Now Group Chat. For one month only, I’m opening this up to all subscribers. We’re talking — aptly! — about where you are on the creative journey, so drop in if you have questions about The Chain.

Lindsay x