Finding Your Digital Writing Voice: Join My July 14 Workshop
We'll explore establishing your digital writing identity and creating a weekly publishing routine online through the Hudson Valley Writers Center summer series
Noah ate a cookie and then an apple as he heard the story of his birth.
It was the first time I read a New York Times-published essay in public about embracing my disability when I became a parent. Noah and Lisa were in the audience.
Join Me: Tickets and info for my July 14 Writing Workshop
I was invited to read the piece for an event called The Word at 250 through the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow, NY. The reading celebrated voices in communities big and small, asking the question, what stories do we still have left to tell 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence? There were over two dozen writers and performers that answered the question with beautiful prose, poetry and performances. Many audience members gasped at the remarkable work being presented.
I was in awe of the talent gathered only a couple miles from my house. It was an extraordinary evening curated by the HVWC’s program director Dominika Wrozynski.
Wonderful writers can be heard at the HVWC every week and I’m lucky that I will be among them once again when I teach a workshop through the center’s Summer Publishing Series Tuesday, July 14 from 7pm-8pm via Zoom. It’s called Finding Your Digital Writing Voice and it’s about establishing your digital writing identity and creating a weekly publishing routine online. We’ll explore how we can authentically share our work on platforms like Substack. I’ve found community on Substack and I want to share how I approach posting an essay here every week.
It was special reciting a piece that changed my life at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. This essay made me want to be a full-time writer. I’ve become a full-time writer. It was published a month after Noah, now four-years-old, was born and I remember being extremely anxious. This was how I told many of my close friends that I’m a disabled person. After hiding my disability for thirty years, writing about being a disabled dad with cerebral palsy has been healing. These weekly essays are to help others understand what it’s like being a disabled parent but they’re also for myself.
It’s hard for me to return to old work. Once a piece is written, I prefer to leave it in the past but it was time to revisit this essay and for Noah to hear about our experience. I’ll never completely leave this one in the past, but I’m looking toward the future to help other writers find their paths.
When Noah and Lisa returned home from the reading, Noah asked, “were those Dadda’s friends he was reading to?” They are now.
Join me: Tickets and info for my July 14 Workshop
Read more of my work here:
New York Times: With a Baby on the Way, It Was Time to Embrace My Disability
Writer’s Digest: Adaptations I Learned Writing a Memoir With Cerebral Palsy
USA Today: ‘Dadda is disabled’: How I teach my son about my cerebral palsy
Wishing you all the best with the workshop Chris!
Thanks for sharing your experience about getting to read that older essay and to have Lisa and Noah in attendance. Lots of courage there and it sounds like it was rewarded.
I think it's interesting that you don't like to go back to past work. I recently went back to a piece I wrote at age 8 :)
You never know where material will shout its presence for a post.
Wishing you the best with your workshop.