From time to time I muse about what thing or things I might add to this Substack that my readers and I would both find fun, and that would additionally be reasonably sustainable things for me to do.
At the moment I am pondering a few options, all video-based:
reviving Tante Hanne’s Writing Hour — for those of you who weren’t around for this, it was a monthly video-call live hangout where those who wished could spend an hour or so writing on their own projects, in virtual company, with a little time for chat at the beginning/end.
doing a monthly live event called Tante Hanne Explains It All For You where I take on a particular subject on which I have some kind of expertise, like say the history of sexuality or how to declutter a closet or make a good vegetable soup or how to do medical advocacy for someone you love, and y’all show up and I tell you what I know and you laugh and maybe learn some things.
doing a monthly live event called I Call Bullshit where I take on a topic — the history of hot dogs, Great Women Painters of the C19th, understanding coastal erosion — and give some random number (4, 5, 6?) of short takes on the topic, at the end of which the audience has to decide which ones are bullshit and which ones are true. Might be some kind of prize involved?
doing a monthly Danger! Writer At Work live screenshare for an hour where I just share the screen in which I’m writing whatever I’m working on, live, with whatever mutterings of expletives happen to accompany said writing and whatever I happen to be listening to. Probably also whatever cat or dog insists on interrupting. You tune in, observe a little behind-the-scenesy word-splattering; comment stream available, probably you go away feeling a lot better about your own spelling skills.
Would you show up for any of this? Some more than others? One but not the rest?
Could you do me a solid and let me know your thoughts? Tickyboxes below, but comments are also wide open. NOTE: I discovered belatedly that the format of poll that this platform offers allows only one option. If you’d like to register your enthusiasm for more than one, please do so in a comment!
Oh dear, I wanted to vote for 1, 2, and 4 but it cut me off at the first. All three of those would do me good. I'd also be delighted to have a version of i call bullshit where you call bullshit with 5 short takes but no one has to guess. I think I'm tired from parsing true from false in real life these days.
I also could only click one and am equally interested in Tante Hanne Explains It All.