You’re invited. . .

I am super excited about this!

You all know what a fan I am of Brené Brown and every one of her books, so it's with great joy and enthusiasm that I'm announcing my first ever cyber-bookclub. I won't pretend to say that I've ironed out all the details, but here's the bare bones of how I hope our bookclub will work. I leave for Montana this Saturday for a writing workshop with Laura Munson (more details on this later, too), and will follow up with specifics after my return on November 1.

Here are The Basics: 

1. We will begin reading Rising Strong during the second week of November. (We may skip reading a chapter during the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas if enough people will be unavailable.)

2. We will read one chapter per week.

3. Each week, I intend for there to be a different person who spearheads writing about the chapter. What I mean by spearhead is this:  Each week it will be a different person's job to write the primary post relative to the chapter. I will develop more guidelines to this, but I want our bookclub to be interactive and figured the best way to achieve that goal was for a different person to be "in charge" of writing each week about each chapter. I will take Chapter One, our first week, and we will rotate one participant per week every week thereafter until we finish. There are 11 chapters in the book. Ideally, we'll have at least 11 participants. If not, we'll rotate through readers and then begin again. If we have too many participants (wouldn't that be a great problem to have!), I will make random selections or a reader can opt out of spearheading. (Readers may not opt out of commenting, see below.)

4. Please note: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A WRITER TO PARTICIPATE. This bookclub is intended to generate conversation amongst people that have shared some similar struggles and experiences. The intent is not to debate semantics or grammar or to comment in any way on writing ability. I'm not going to ask for comments of a certain length, although I hope each person will write enough to generate a lively community discussion and not too much that we feel like we're reading a second book. The writing is not "the thing." Conversation and connection and learning are driving my desire for this project.

5. My email newsletter gets generated every Thursday morning. Therefore, the person spearheading that week's chapter will get their written comments to me via email the day prior, on Wednesday. I will create that week's post here on the site. Once the newsletter goes out Thursday morning, the rest of the readers will then have access to the comment section under the post to share ideas and wisdom. Every reader who is not spearheading the chapter will commit to writing at least one comment on the primary post. I hope we'll choose to write many.

6. If enough people are interested, after we finish the book we'll schedule a Skype session to chat "in person."

7. To participate simply write a comment in the comment section below this post indicating that you are interested or message me directly on Facebook or email me or use the Contact tab to reach me. I'll take you any way I can get you! I'll communicate with each of you directly before we start.

I understand this will be a commitment, and an investment of time and energy. I hope it will be worth our while. That being said, if you don’t want to commit to participating for the duration of the project, you’ll have the option to chime in each week when I post the blogs to Facebook. In other words, you don’t have to sign up officially if you’d rather dabble. Dabbling is great, too!

I know this might sound a little confusing, but I promise it will be clearer before we begin. What's important to know right now is that I very much hope you'll join us on this journey. Let's read Rising Strong together and Rise Strong!