Seasonal Session for late winter this Thursday

+ poll to choose next Sunday's "What Now?" Group Chat topic

Hi friends,

If you’re new here, hi! I’m so glad you’ve found our community of (perimenopausal), midlife memoir-lovers. We’re much more than that, of course. This corner of the internet is for anyone asking themselves, “What now?” It’s for the deep thinkers and feelers. The carers. The parents. The readers as well as the writers.

Perhaps you’ve stumbled upon this Substack following an automatic recommendation from another publication you subscribe to. If so, the best place for you to start is over on my welcome page where you’ll find out what to expect whatever subscription tier you choose:

This week, TWO live sessions for the Membership + a guest post:

• Seasonal Session for late winter Thursday 20th February 8-9pm GMT on Zoom (link for Members in the Membership Hub and sent out again by email and in Chat midday Thursday and replay available — just DM me).

As always, we’ll be journaling around an oracle card, the micro season of Daffodil Spears (which runs from 19th-23rd February in Nature’s Calendar: The British Year in 72 Micro Seasons) and reflecting on entering the last quarter moon that day at 17:32 GMT. Often, this phase of the moon cycle offers opportunities to let go of things that no longer serve you and there’s a specific “drawing down” energy with this quarter moon that invites yet more consideration on what you need to offer yourself now in preparation for all that lies ahead. We’re like bulbs deep in the soil getting ready to emerge (at least that’s the energy I’m bringing)…

• Guest Post for my literary agent —

  Caro Clarke
  — on Friday 21st Feb

It’s week three of Portobello Literary’s Crafting a Non-Fiction Book Proposal course, and I’m excited to share my perspective on crafting the biography, market and readership sections of a proposal. Catching up? Head over here without delay:

Proposal Course: Session One

• “What Now?” Group Chat Sunday 23rd February 8-9pm

Here are three possible discussion topics we can dig into next Sunday night:

How does Chat work?

Next Sunday morning, you’ll receive your usual post from me direct to your email or Substack inbox. In that, I’ll respond to the topic you’ve picked and share some words that act as a prompt for that evening’s chat. When I launch it at 8pm, you’ll get an alert that chat is open. You can join for as little or as long as you like and we’ll chat together for the hour. It’s a bit like a WhatsApp group where we can chat in real time unlike the comments threads on written posts (like this one) where we say our piece then drop off.

If you don’t already have the app here’s the link you need, though you can use Chat on the desktop, too:

Finally, Memoir in a Month ends this Wednesday night with our sharing ceilidh. As always, it’s been an incredible privilege to support life writers embarking on the task of crafting memoir, and though this course won’t run again in 2025, it’s to make space for a brand new course on utilising family archive and primary source material to craft narrative, and I can’t wait to share more on this with you soon.

Members have exclusive access to my own memoir, Held in Mind, as a complete audiobook, plus all the behind-the-scenes material. Hop on over to this post to get stuck in:

Or listen on Spotify right here:

See you through the week, I hope!

Lindsay x