TL;DR We’re merging Write or Die & Forever Workshop to just be Write or Die
We’ve tried to put together different versions of the story of Chill Subs and Write or Die. We batted around the idea of a timeline or a nice little braided essay. A ballad? An opera! But it’s 2026 and we’re all too busy for ballads and operas cause we’ve gotta get some more work in before the robots kill us. So the only respectful way I feel is appropriate to share this story is with the frantic energy of a four-year-old telling you, in one breath, everything that happened on vacation AT THE DINOSAUR PARK!
Ready? Good, me neither.
OK so....in 2022 we met Write or Die through the internet and liked them a lot. They had a great, active community and there was a general energy of, well, being alive, which is hard to maintain sometimes in the industry we’re in (have you noticed?). So we got in touch with Kailey who ran Write or Die to see if she wanted to do some content things with us. Thankfully, she did! Because at the time our blog was super-shit we asked Kailey if she wanted to make Write or Die our (as in Chill Subs’) official magazine because blogs can be a whole thing. So we did a lot of bell-ringing and got married (Chill Subs and Write or Die that is) and when websites get married they join together on one website…so for a long time a user of either CS or WoD was able to ping back and forth between Chill Subs and Write or Die from the same page and we had loads of courses and content and we both grew and grew and then we decided to try an experiment called “Write or Die 101” which was a Substack where we did one workshop each month as a companion to Write or Die (which did big workshops…stay focused, I know.) and it went well but after a few months it was understandably way too much work for the Write or Die team so the Chill Subs team took it over and renamed it Forever Workshop. Part of this was also because people were understandably getting confused between Write or Die and Write or Die 101 and ahhh, so....so: then there were three brands now (still with me right? There’s a long way to go, nobody would blame you for a bathroom break. Unless you’re already there? Understandable.) Chill Subs, Write or Die, and Forever Workshop (no we are not even going to start talking about Sub Club right now, shush), and that worked for a while but then we got to a point where all the brands were too big and different and we didn’t know how to fit them all together soooo…um… we divorced. For the kids. Except it wasn’t one of those sad messy divorces where people throw shit and everyone gets a little traumatized, but rather of those mature ones where the empty nest turned out to be like…really empty and we both know each other well enough to know who gets what and everyone is friends. But see, a marriage is a lot more fun of a thing to announce than a divorce, so we didn’t say anything when we got divorced. But then Kailey WROTE A BOOK! and HAD A BABY! and Write or Die became a little much because books and babies require a lot of work and so Write or Die was put on hold and meanwhile at Chill Subs we were having trouble with Forever Workshop because on some months poets got a great workshop and on the next fiction writers got a great one but then all the poets left us and so on and on and polygamy just doesn’t work folks! And we have had this problem for years where we cannot get over this hump with FW no matter what we do because, let’s face it, 12 workshops a year is a lot, and even when we made them smaller it was still a lot so most people stayed for one workshop and then bookmarked a lot of others they planned to try but never did because of things like books and babies and life and then they’re like “hey what’s this Forever Workshop thing anyway and then cancel while saying really nice words and so, SO soooo… When we heard that Kailey was looking for a new owner for Write or Die we knew we had to do something because Write or Die was still under the Chill Subs umbrella (according to anyone who didn’t know we divorced [also known as everybody]), so we decided to buy Write or Die outright, official, all the content and lists and socials and odds and ends so long as Kailey promised to stay on and hold our hand while we get our bearings. And so we sat and looked at the pieces of all we got and thought, “hey this Forever Workshop thing isn’t quite working, and this Write or Die thing needs some reworking, WHAT IF WE PUT THEM TOGETHER?!” So that’s what we’re going to do: Forever workshop will be consumed by Write or Die along with a few of our other newsletters (not Sub Club, remember we’re not talking about Sub Club) and Write or Die will become the 3rd pillar in our Chill Subs ecosystem because it has better name recognition (and a better name) and it has a social media and big archive, and it’s just still got all the things we loved in the first place, and since Forever Workshop was originally meant to be just a companion to Write or Die, it is a neat little narrative (NEAT?! DOES THIS SOUND NEAT?!), and everyone can live happily ever after, and by that we mean that we hope everyone likes what we’ve got in store for Write or Die because, hell, it wasn’t cheap (and I know life isn’t about money but all the things we need to stay alive cost money so...it kinda is).
Alright, that’s the deal. We’re really excited for how this has brought a couple of our brands together in a way that will finally make sense. We’ve got a crazy line up of fantastic columnists on board. We’re going to take submissions and try to explore the writing world in a way nobody else has done. From the analytics we can see all of the most popular posts from Forever Workshop so we’re listening to that.
The tagline is “Making sense of the writing world.” And we chose that tagline, because we couldn’t use the tagline that every major publication on writing has been using for decades. Specifically:
How many ads can we fit on this page before it feels like your eyes are chewing glass?
We want to help writers understand this stuff. Like how you market yourself, where you can actually get good writing education, and WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE END OF THE WRITING WORLD (and is it, tho?)…
We categorically disagree with the notion that there is no money in writing. There is–lots of it! MFA program enrollment is up. You can’t turn a page on the internet without some impressive such-and-such offer of a course, feedback letter, residency, $7,000 trip to the Bahamas to write on a turtle. And hey, we do it too. Because that’s where the money is. In writers. So let’s talk about it, investigate how to spend it wisely so that some (it will always be some) writers can find a way to make more off what they write than what they’re putting into it.
We’ll be breaking down how folks got published in dream magazines and presses. How they get agents, what they’ve learned about the writing world they wish they knew. We’ve got loads of data at Chill Subs that reveals trends in the industry nobody else is talking about. And our revenue model is not based on making anyone happy except our readers.
So that’s where we’re headed with Write or Die. The team will be led by Shannan Mann, with Kennedy Cole as editorial assistant, Kailey will remain a Founding Editor, and Chill Subs’ design & social media teams will do all the work to make everything look beautiful. We’ll have columnists, submissions, essays, analysis and a goddamn vulture because fuck it, we’re doing this animal thing. Idk how it happened or why but we’re all in on mascots. Let’s go. Speaking of, Graywolf Press just redid their mascot and it’s awesome. And that’s it. I’m ending on a plug for Graywolf Press. Like they need it.
Not totally sure what's happening here but I'm up for it.
Take a deep breath...you earned it.