3x/month stories for humans seeking depth and meaning.

I'm Janelle Hardy and at some point you signed up for this weekly (ish) newsletter on memoir-writing, somatic (body) healing and stories. If you'd like to unsubscribe, just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.

Hi there! This is one of two e-mails I'm sending to let you know about my upcoming Write Your Bio, Create Your Media Kit Workshop, which I'm teaching this month.

If you're an ambitious writer, creative, maker, healer or solopreneur, this will save you a ton of time.

Don't want to hear about this course? Click here to opt-out of the reminder e-mail.​

That time I hid in an old-timer's cabin

Standing to the right side of the front entrance, I took a deep breath, then walked up, pushed then pulled the large-handled door open, and entered the Museum and Archives of Vernon.

An hour and a half later I exited, saying over and over to myself "you had two great conversations. That means this networking event was a success."

Like Cinderella when the clock strikes 12, I'd immediately removed myself from the milling fray of flashing teeth, business cards, clipboards, glasses of wine and sparkly business-casual Friday night attire after I had that 2nd conversation.

"Sooooo, what do you do?"

That dreaded question rebounded over and over from strangers, crackling around the main gathering room.

The question came when I tried putting myself in the centre of the main room, filled with local business owners and Chamber of Commerce members, then turning in a circle, smiling with trembling lips while trying to make eye contact.

It came at the edges of the crowd, surrounded by displays of taxidermied local fauna, animals frozen in action, where I waited for people to approach me.

The question paused when I ducked into a tiny reconstructed miner's cabin for a breather, and marveled at how my head almost skimmed the ceiling, at the narrower than twin-sized bedframe, at being in a whole home the size of my small bedroom.

The question returned, even from behind a wall of drawers filled with stunning Norwegian settler pottery and local Syilx people's beadwork.

My entire purpose at the gathering was to make connections. Answering that dreaded question, "sooooo, what do you do?" was part of the social contract.

But I didn't yet have enough clarity and confidence to answer that question.

So I rambled.

I bored people to tears with esoteric insider explanations of bodywork and creativity. I stumbled over my words. Their eyes glazed over as they lost track of the simplest point I couldn't get to (write your memoir and heal).

But then, if I got in the flow and people seemed interested, I would suddenly become so self-conscious, or the echo-chamber of repeated phrases got so loud in my head, that I'd clam up and make it awkward.

Those two great conversations I was aiming for?

The ones that would, by my own rules, allow me to leave and go home?

They weren't even about my work!!!

One was with the archivist about my seven months working at Yukon Archives. The other was a random chit chat with a young guy, an electrician and business owner who was similarly hiding behind museum displays.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

I have so many iterations stories of those kinds of attempts to connect and answer the question of 'what do you do'.

They were painful but necessary, at a time when I was still working through social anxiety.

Necessary because, in-person or not, when we have good work we want to share, we need to be able to connect and communicate what we do.

It's no different online, it's just that it's in written and visual form.

We're still faced with the challenge of answering the question of 'soooo, what do you do' with enough clarity that someone wants to come closer and learn more. So that we:

• can share our writing
• have attendees at our art shows
• get clients booking those healing sessions
• get participants signing up for our writing circles
• invite people to scroll through our social media feeds to learn more
• get readers subscribing to our newsletter lists
• Etcetera

How we share ourselves online is a necessary complement to what we share in-person. Because how many of you immediately look someone up online after you've met them and been intrigued by their work? Both hands raised over here!?!

And what happens if how they show up online isn't cohesive with how they show up in person? Or vice versa? What happens if it's confusing? Both hands down over here!

Answering that question and sharing who we are and what we do is incredibly important.

The great news is, it can actually be compelling, playful and fun.

Sharing who we are can also be flexible enough to evolve with us.

So, with that in mind, what if you thought of your artistic and/or your professional bio (and your accompanying imagery (headshots, etc) as a mini-memoir? As a visual narrative?

Doesn't this immediately make answering 'what do you do' funner?!

Memoir is, after all, a meaning-making process, so you can take that process into crafting a professional (or anti-professional) bio.

Join me in my Write Your Bio, Create Your Media Kit Workshop to learn how to:

• write an absolutely fantastic bio in short, mid-length and longform. In first person. In third person. Multiple mini-memoirs!
• put together a collection of pictures of yourself and your work that don't make you cringe! Because the visual can be a mini-memoir too.
• get feedback on your bio, images, media kit, and then be done with it. No more figuring out. Just copy/paste/share each time you submit your work, pitch your work and even get invited to work with others.

Because the other fantastic thing about creating and using a great media kit is that you feel good about how you're showing up. It's easy to share. It's easy to update.

Bonus outcome: producers and administrators (the people working hard to share your work with the world) will LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

If you make their jobs easier, you will stand out in a sea of people-wrangling.

So, let's go!

Take Write Your Bio, Create Your Media Kit Workshop with me:

A 2-session online workshop with plenty of resources, some preparatory pre-homework (homeplay) and, in the last session, supportive helpful critiques of your media kits.

So you can answer that damn question "soooo, what do you do?" with confidence and ease!

• Session 1 of 2: Thursday May 23rd, 11:30am-1:30pm Pacific Time
• Session 2 of 2: Thursday May 30th, 11:30am-1:30pm Pacific Time
• Workshop replay provided

​Click here to sign up​

A little background on this workshop and me as the teacher:

I created this media kit workshop after reading 600+ bios in the literary arts, visual arts, dance arts, musical arts, interdisciplinary arts, as well as entrepreneurial healing arts and viewing the same number of accompanying headshots and creative arts samples (photos of people and their art, samples of writing, video of dance/performance/movement arts, etcetera).

I've read bios and assessed creative portfolios and applications related to:

• applications for artist residencies (my own home-based one as well as one I ran as a staff member) and art shows (for a community arts gallery in Whitehorse)
• pitches to be a guest on my podcast
• pitches to be a presenter/speaker at my online summits (Healing Through Writing Festival)
• artist and community arts funding programs (both as an advanced artist award jury assessor and as an arts fund administrator for the Yukon Government Arts Branch)

I figured out you can create a media kit that can serve most of those needs. So I did that.

I've successfully pitched myself using my media kit to:

• coming events magazines and newspapers (as a writer)
• artist in residence programs
• visual art shows
• podcasts
• in-person conferences, festivals and retreats all over North America

This media kit workshop was developed out of personal need to save time.

I wanted to have an easy to access document from which to share the essential information that administrators and producers needed without me having to search folders and files, and/or rewrite and rethink every time.

Believe me, I did it the hard way for a while before I made it easy for myself!

However, the bones of this media kit workshop was developed out of frustration at how many creatives and aspiring entrepreneurs were showing up, when I was an administrator and assessor of applications.

I'm disappointed to say that more than 50% of the people I've worked with in all of these different capacities have been disorganized, submitted information late, in multiple emails, often with sloppy/confusing/unedited descriptions of them and their work.

Not only did this limit my ability to understand their applications and therefore say yes to them, but it increased my workload, which was frustrating.

In full transparency, I used to be that disorganized confusing creative. I thought the admins were being boring, bureaucratic and rigid. If I thought about them at all.

I stopped believing that when I started doing admin and production and finally understood this key detail: administrators are flooded with information, requests and applications.

They have to design systems in order to serve you and your beautiful work (often while they are underpaid, with limited time). Because of this, they can't serve you, nor do they want to, if you don't make it easy for them.

In my admin and production roles, which had a mandate of artist mentorship, I therefore spent a lot of time coaching artists, creatives and healers on how to put together a great media kit. I also encountered a surprising amount of resistance to the learning and applying the suggestions that would help them build their careers faster and with more ease!

But in all these scenarios, a great media kit makes it easy for everyone!

Easier for you because you're not scrambling all the time to rewrite what you do and find a decent headshot.

Easier for those producers, administrators and gatekeepers out there who are trying to support you in making you and your amazing work more visible and accessible.

Easier all around.

So join me in Write Your Bio, Create Your Media Kit Workshop:

a 2 session online workshop with plenty of resources and some pre-homework

• Workshop, session 1: Thursday May 23rd, 11:30am-1:30pm Pacific Time
• Workshop, session 2: Thursday May 30th, 11:30am-1:30pm Pacific Time
• Workshop replays provided

​Click here to sign up​

If you can't attend live, sign up anyways. Recordings will be provided.

xoxo,

Janelle

If you know anyone who could benefit from this, please do share it forward. I teach this sporadically, so now's the time to share and encourage friends (especially cash-strapped friends) to sign up.

PS - Don't want to hear about this Write Your Bio, Create Your Media Kit Workshop next week? Click here to opt-out of the reminder e-mail.
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