A 60-MINUTE HUMOR WRITING WORKSHOP WITH ZOE ROGERS

The Pause: Substack Office Hour

 

Get more intentional about how you show up, connect, and grow on Substack.

A live, one-hour conversation with Shelley and Stephanie for writers who want to make Substack work better for them — without turning it into another thing they have to master.

October 22 at 10:00 AM MT / 12:00 PM ET / 9:00 AM PT
Live on Zoom
$25

I WANT IN!

You started a Substack. Now what?

Maybe you’re publishing regularly but wondering why some posts connect and others don’t.

Maybe you’re trying to figure out Notes, Lives, paid subscriptions, headlines, branding, and all the other pieces that seem to come with building a presence on Substack.

Or maybe you simply want to be more thoughtful about what you’re creating and why.

The Pause: Substack Office Hour is a live, one-hour conversation designed to help writers step back from the constant pressure to do more and instead think more intentionally about how they’re using the platform.

We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and where it actually makes sense to put your energy.

Bring your questions. Bring your ideas. Bring the things you’ve been experimenting with.

This isn’t a backend tutorial or a step-by-step technical training. It’s a conversation about creating a Substack that feels clear, engaging, sustainable, and like you.

What We’ll Talk About

Growth & Engagement

How do you actually connect with more readers?

We’ll talk about Notes, Lives, consistency, community, and the different ways writers are building meaningful engagement on Substack — without feeling like they need to be everywhere all the time.

Branding & Voice

What makes someone want to keep reading you?

We’ll explore finding your angle, refining the way you describe your work, and getting clearer about the subjects and ideas that genuinely light you up.

Content That Connects

There’s more to a great Substack than simply publishing consistently.

We’ll talk about creating posts that teach, inform, entertain, engage, or make someone feel something — and how to think more intentionally about what you’re giving your readers.

AI, Headlines & Your Actual Voice

AI can be incredibly useful. It can also make everything start sounding exactly the same.

We’ll talk about where AI can support your writing and brainstorming, where your own voice matters most, and how to think about headlines that make people want to open your work without losing what makes it yours.

Paid vs. Free

Should you have paid subscribers? What belongs behind the paywall? And when does it make sense to keep something free?

We’ll discuss ways to think about your free and paid content and how those choices can support the kind of Substack you actually want to build.

The Bigger Picture

Substack keeps evolving.

We’ll take a high-level look at what’s happening on the platform right now, emerging trends, and what writers may want to pay attention to as they decide where to put their time and energy.

 

This Is an Office Hour — So Bring Your Questions

There isn’t one right way to build a Substack.

That’s exactly why this session is designed as a conversation rather than a presentation.

Shelley and Stephanie will share what they’ve learned, what they’re seeing, and the questions they think writers should be asking — and you’ll have space to bring your own questions, experiments, frustrations, and ideas into the discussion.

Whether you’re trying to grow your audience, sharpen your focus, decide what to charge for, or simply figure out what the heck you’re supposed to be doing with Notes, you’re welcome here.

 

Meet your instructor

Shelley Karpaty

Shelley Karpaty is a writer, mindfulness teacher, and the voice behind Spicy Soul Mama Substack. She's spent the last several years writing her way through the kind of unraveling that changes everything. Her memoir-in-progress, The Sacred Unraveling: Reclaiming Motherhood and the Truth of Who You Are, weaves personal story, ancient wisdom, and the voices of other mothers into a reckoning with who we become when the life we built no longer fits.

A certified Vipassana meditation teacher in the lineage of Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, an Enneagram coach, and a longtime student of Ram Dass, Shelley brings the same depth to her workshops that she brings to the page by creating space where women can stop performing their stories and start telling the true ones.

Her writing has appeared in The Sun, Mad in America, Business Insider, Elephant Journal, and LA Yoga, and she is a 2025 Dairy Hollow Writer-in-Residence Fellow. She lives and teaches in the Coachella Valley desert, where she's learned that darkness isn't the absence of the sacred, it's often exactly where it lives.

Steph Smith Sprenger

Steph is a writer, editor, podcaster, and producer whose work centers on helping women reconnect with themselves through writing. She is the founder of The Pause, editor-in-chief of THREE literary magazine, co-producer of Listen to Your Mother Boulder, and author of the forthcoming memoir Nostalgia Junkie. 
 

Steph's essays have been published in O Magazine, The Washington Post, Brain, Child Magazine, Scary Mommy, Mutha Magazine, The Huffington Post, and other places.

Two options to join us.

THIS WORKSHOP

ONE-TIME PAYMENT OF

$25

Get the Zoom link and join us live—a recording with handouts will be emailed following this workshop.

Join the workshop →
THE PAUSE MEMBERSHIP

ONE FULL MONTH FOR

$49

Get access to this workshop as well as all other guest instructor workshops, co-working, forums, and a video library.

I want all the goods!

The Pause:

A creative community for midlife women

The Pause is a creative community for midlife women who feel something shifting and want a place to reconnect with their creative spark. You might be rethinking your work, your relationships, your writing, or even who you are in this season. You might be in the process of outgrowing old systems that aren't working anymore, or shedding a skin.  

Here, you will find women who are thoughtful, curious, and willing to connect on a deep level. Women who are building new things. Women who are letting go of old things. Women who are simply trying to listen to their own voices again and to figure out what stories they really want to tell. If you are craving connection, inspiration, and steady forward movement in a supportive community, you are welcome here.

Join Today!