Writers Lab: Our Summer Project Week 1

The "Why" of What We Do: Join us!

Welcome to Storybelly Summer and the Writers Lab, everyone! Whether you're already a Lab Coat (a paid subscriber) or just curious, I’ve had a host of questions lately, so let me try to explain the Lab a bit. First:

For Lab Coats, your Summer Project and first summer Assignment begins below the paywall. The Project is a season-long, very cool undertaking that will shape your writing life. Short Exercises will complement the project work each week, to keep your writing whistles whetted. Is that a word? It is now.

If you are a founding member, summertime is when we do writing critiques and consultations, stay tuned for that. Our ops-guru Zach is making good recovery progress and will be reaching out to you soon.

For free subscribers: I'm so glad you're here. If you are happy and content as a free subscriber, sip on an Arnold Palmer and do nothing! (Maybe “relax!” is a better way to put it. Or… “comment and participate as you’re led!” etc.) It’s fabulous to have you here as well — we need one another! We need all voices. You'll always get weekly Storybelly essays, and if you'd like to join the Writers Lab this summer, now’s the perfect time, with our Summer Project just beginning. You can join the Lab here — consider this your heartfelt invitation.

For everyone: Here are some answers to questions I’m getting often enough to figure that even those not asking them might be wondering, as we have a lot of newbies-to-Substack here (and that includes me), so please indulge me a moment. I’ll do my best.

What’s in the Writers Lab? What does it cost?

You’ll get a post labeled “Writers Lab” (like this one!) in your email inbox or at the Substack app once a week. I know, this post has a “locked” sign on it to designate it’s for “paid subscribers only” but you will still get a snippet of it, like you’re getting today.

There is always a paywall in the Writers Lab posts that free subscribers will eventually come to, with the Assignment part of the post under that, but there will be no paywall for paid subscribers in that post, as you’ll be a $6/month subscriber for the three months of summer Lab posts, so $18 will give you a summer of writing together (and $55 will give you a year) and you’ll be helping us create a warm, safe, encouraging community of writers both beginning and seasoned, each of us cheering the other on.

Where IS the Writers Lab? How do I get there?

The Writers Lab is right HERE. It lives under the paywall on this post, and on all Writers Lab posts. That’s where you get your Assignment, comment on the assignments, bolster one another by replying to comments, and use Chat for tangents and more detailed looks at life, writing, food, and community engagement.

I hope that helps make the Lab feel a little clearer. It’s right here, at the bottom of this post. :> If you are a Lab Coat, you don’t have to write. You can cheer others on. You don’t have to post. The Writers Lab is just a quieter (and, yes, paid) space within Storybelly — a place for those who want to dig into stories a little more, in whatever way feels right to them. There’s something here for you, whether you’re writing, reading, or just want to be part of a curious, creative, and encouraging community online. We are explorers. Some of us are writing poetry, some are writing non-fiction, some are writing recipes. Some are writing memoir, personal narrative, fiction, the possibilities are endless. You can join anytime. Come as you are. We’ll save you a seat.

What am I paying for?

Paying for a monthly or yearly subscription at Storybelly means you are a Lab Coat — a Sweetheart of the Storybelly Lab. It helps us create and facilitate a teaching space, a safe, supportive environment full of curated and shepherded writing lessons/tutorials/classes/workshops (and recipes and words of sorta-wisdom, and humor and whatever else we collectively feel like making Storybelly as we grow), as well as lively conversations and lots of learning together the art of telling, writing, and saving our stories.

You can help us shape this space. It’s an exciting thought, eh? Something new and meaningful and useful and funny and warm-hearted and caring.

Wearing actual lab coats is optional (ha!). I supply cake. So do others. We are gathering our recipes. Can a meet-up be far behind? What about a cookbook? (Be still my heart. lol.) Come be part of something lovely.

Here is the actual subscribe button if you need it. lol. (I dislike the buttons, so I usually just link, as I did above):

You can unsub at any time. If you need financial help with the Lab, let me know. We have scholarship money set aside. No questions asked.

My short-version “WHY” with Storybelly (see the Assignment for more on this) is simple: I want to help create a caring community of people in this crazy world right now, and help get more of our stories — all stories — out into the world as well, with you. This is the way to peace. Trust me, it is. As I always say when teaching: “It’s hard to hate someone when you know their story.” Same goes for ourselves… the more we understand ourselves, the more grace we can give to ourselves and others.

Okay. ONWARD (and thanks for your patience):

(see the Assignment for more)

When my kids were growing up in Frederick, Maryland, in another lifetime, I made lists every summer of movies we’d watch (which we rented at our local Erol’s Video, which was next to the old Giant Food on the Golden Mile at Baughman’s Lane), and the books we’d read, together and separately. We’d also have a project to complete every summer… I don’t know that I posted that project, but I’m going to post our Writers Lab Summer Project today.

In those other-lifetime years, the lists lived on the bulletin board at the stair landing to the basement, and items got crossed off, signed off on, whatevered, depending on how many kids and readers were in the house that summer.

Before those Frederick days, when there was just one child, and then two (before the full complement of four and hangers-on), library lists — the ones you’d find at checkout — were my Bibles for what to read aloud to toddlers and elementary-aged readers. I always had those lists tacked on the bulletin board as well.

We called the movies on the list (or I did) “the Summer Family Film Fest.” We had no central a/c, and the basement was the coolest area in the house in summer, so we’d congregate down there and watch “To Kill A Mockingbird” for the third time (I have not heard the end of this yet); “Gremlins” or “ET” or “Back to the Future” and so many other movies… “The Wizard of Oz” and “Flight of the Navigator” and The Princess Bride” and the ever-popular “Goonies” (which I was not a fan of, but hey, I could sneak in an occasional “Mockingbird” or “The Reivers," so I was happy). We ate a lot of popcorn on those movie days.

The books we read, the movies we watched, the projects we worked on (often garden-related or cooking-related, or sewing/crafting/building-related, I remember) are part of family lore now, and are a piece of who we were becoming back then… and who we are now.

I feel the same way about writing. I have lived long enough to look back on my body of work and see how I have been influenced by what I watched, what I read, and what I wrote. (And that’s not counting the influence of others, although that is certainly a factor, but for this Summer Project, let’s narrow the scope enough to make it doable, and so we don’t have to visit our therapists.)

Let’s think this summer on what you’ve read, watched, heard (include music, conversations, etc), over a lifetime, and what you’ve tried to make from all of it — how has it influenced you as a writer?

This is elemental stuff, but not hard. It’s worth taking a bit of time to make this a project — I’ll walk you through it, see the Assignment below. It’s foundational work, fundamental work, and it can be alternately heartbreaking and heartfelt. It involves thinking. And feeling. But not onerously so. It should serve as a help to you in why you write what you do, how you write it, and where you want to go with what you write in the future.

AND SO: THE ASSIGNMENT

(This is where the paywall begins, and if you are a Lab Coat, you won’t notice it, you will just read on and be “in” the Writers Lab):