We could not be more excited about this new thing.
A tea light, swatch cards in blue and pink hues, and little wooden hearts on a table.
Hello Beautiful Scribbler.
This is a big day for us. We’re launching something really special… Something we’ve been dreaming of and puttering away at for ages. Something we could not have created before right now.
To set the scene — here’s a problem we hit over and over at Firefly.
One of us has an idea. It’s a great idea. It has energy, vibrancy, we know that people will love it.
We start to map out next steps. We’ll need a description, a webpage, an FAQ, inventory. When will we launch it? How will we price it? Do we have space on the calendar? What questions will people be asking? Will we make enough revenue to cover the costs? How much will it cost?
A lot of our ideas crumble in that process. It takes a tremendous effort to launch new things. We’ve been longing for a way to share fresh ideas with you with more freedom and ease.
Welcome to Fireside Community for Writers.
The real-world word for this is “membership program” but to us it feels more like a living room. A hearth. A way to open the door wide and invite lots of you into our favourite parts of this work — to create something with and for you.
Here’s a taste of what we’re cooking:
Monthly live “Writing Reset” sessions to come back to our writing practice, get clear on next steps, and write lots.
Themed writing sessions every month to get our work moving in new ways.
Special events through the year like author evenings and panels to answer your questions — is publishing the right direction for me? How much plot do I need? How can I meet my fears and just write?
A resource library full of goodies to keep you going — like journaling templates, guided meditations to access courage and questions, tools for plot and character development, and recordings of all membership events.
A community notice board to access our generous and diverse community of writers to find you pen pals, beta readers, writing group buddies and more.
Early bird access with a discount to our small group workshops (except The Big One).
Anything else we get inspired by! We’ll be regularly adding new live sessions and resources. This is our dining room table, and we can’t stop cooking.
Also, we’re starting it out with a big gift.
Our very popular Push Week (a “5-day carnival of forward motion” — a participant called it) is being reinvented by Kim this January as “Push Weekend.”
We’ll be packing all the goodness of the 5-day program into one choose-your-own-adventure weekend of connection and productivity to rocket your writing forward.
You can sign up for Push Weekend anytime, or, it will be a free add-on for all our new Fireside members.
Curious? We’d love to have you.
Our sign-up period will be January 5th–15th, followed by a big orientation to get everyone feeling cozy with everything the program has to offer.
If it’s not the right time, we’ll open registration again in May, and again in September.
Today you can buy gift cards.
We’re selling 4-month and 1-year memberships at both the Community and the Benefactor levels.
Questions? Ask away. We’d love to answer.
In the meantime, we still have our small group workshops, many of which have seats available this winter. Read on…
We also have our mainstay: Cozy Small Group Workshops (online and in person)
If you’re looking for something more intimate and relational, we’ve got room in lots of workshops this winter, including Lift Off, our poetry workshop for people who don’t consider themselves poets, and Keep Your Pen Moving, which is a gentle kick-start for anyone hungry to get started.
Push Weekend
This whole program will be included in our membership program, so you might want to sign up for Fireside to get this for free, and try out our membership world.
But, if you want to check our Push Weekend without joining Fireside, you can do that too.
At our team retreat, we talked a lot about joy as a way to orient forward.
We struggle with this, because creativity can be incredibly trying, and the world is often not joyful. We want to invite a whole spectrum of experiences and emotions.
And yet… Joy fuels us. It occurred to me later that as a leader, my job isn’t just to find my joy, but to cup my ear to the joy of this team, and this community. Then visioning ways to meet and feed that joy.
That’s what I see here. The days are short, but we’re finding new ways to light fires, and gather and share each other’s light.
In it with you,
