Writing Hard Stories (Writing Workshop, virtual)

You’re not the only one with a story that feels too complicated to write.

There’s a story you keep coming back to. Maybe it’s still unfolding — what we call an “alive” story. Maybe it happened years ago and it’s been living in you ever since, waiting. You want to write it. But then comes the part that stops most people cold:

What about the other people in it?

This is a 90-minute conversation where you get to ask me anything about the hard parts of writing true stories — the ones about your life, your family, your ex, your person, your past. Not the craft stuff. The complicated stuff. The “can I actually write this?” stuff.

You can submit your questions before we meet, and we’ll spend our time together getting into the nuances — the complicated ones that don’t have clean answers, and need talking through to understand.

What we’ll get into:

• How do you write about people you know (and still see them at dinner)?
• What parts of the story are yours to tell?
• Who owns a shared story?
• What do you do when your memory and someone else’s don’t match?
• Writing about the people you love. Writing about the people who hurt you.
• What “protecting yourself” on the page actually looks like

Come with questions about writing hard stories about people in your life, ready to be answered.

This is for you if:

You’re writing — or want to write — a story about your life, and knowing you’ll have to write about your partner, your mother, or someone else still in your life is making you hesitate. You might be wondering what’s okay to put on the page. And get a chance to

something true, and the people in your story are making you hesitate. You’ve been wondering what’s okay to put on the page. You want to talk it through with someone who’s been in it, not just someone who’s read about it.

Facilitator: Laura Howe

Laura Howe is the founder of Dispatched Divorcée and the creator and director of Ladies’ Night — a storytelling show where divorced women take the stage in their own words. She’s guided dozens of women through finding, shaping, and owning their stories — including the ones that felt impossible to tell. She’s also writing her own.