Writing About Hard Things: Strategies for Craft & Care

Have you ever wondered how to write about a difficult life experience without feeling like you’re trauma dumping on the nice carpet or just forcing yourself to relive something painful? How can we write about the hard things in our lives while maintaining a sense of dignity and self-care? 

This hour-long workshop with writers Inés Bellina and Sarah Kokernot will explore why it can feel so empowering to write about life’s less-than-wonderful moments, and how to do so in a way that is gentle, meaningful, supportive—and sometimes—funny. We’ll guide you through a few reflective exercises that will help you decide how to write about a difficult life experience in a way that is cathartic yet purposeful. Drawing on our own published essays and stories, we’ll give you craft and self-care strategies so that you can honor the experience in your words. 

Ines will talk about how she explored divorce and medical issues through an award-winning poem, a storytelling piece for the Scrappy Reading Series and through her bestselling Substack.

Sarah will discuss two essays published in Tricycle that deal with disappointment in publishing, growing up in a queer family in Kentucky, and also going no-contact with a parent.

This workshop is for:

• Emerging and advanced writers grappling with a difficult subject matter in their drafts

• Writers seeking to publish or share their work about a difficult subject matter

• Any writer who wants to create a supportive writing practice for themselves

Can't make the class? We'll send out a recording of the event to everyone who registered.

Price: $50

Paid subscribers to The Cranky Guide or Your Wild and Radiant Mind will get a 50% off discount code via email.

Meet Your Instructors

Ines Bellina is a writer, translator, and bon vivant. She is the co-author of LGNSQ, a bilingual photography book about Logan Square, and co-translator of the centennial edition of Desolación, the seminal poetry collection by Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral. She has bylines in Pit Magazine, Gloria, The Cut, Saveur, Daily Beast, Chicago Magazine, and other publications you’ve probably heard of. Her writing has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Ragdale Foundation, the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Wedding Cake House residency. You can find out more about her life and where the hell she is in the world on her newsletter The Cranky Guide.

Sarah Kokernot is a fiction writer and essayist. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, Tricycle, EPOCH, Michigan Quarterly Review, and other publications. She has taught creative writing as an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University and at StoryStudio Chicago. Sarah is passionate about facilitating and guiding others to connect with their innate creativity, joy, and wholeness through writing. She is currently revising her first novel and is working on an essay collection. 

Sarah writes about creative practice and spirituality on her monthly Substack,Your Wild And Radiant Mind. You can visit Sarah’s website at sarahkokernot.com to read more about her work and projects.