What Is Write&W(h)ine?

Written By Lex Vranick

It’s a question I’m asked quite often. People see the #WriteAndWine hashtag floating around on Twitter or nestled in my social media bios and get a bit curious. What is that? What does it mean?

Our full story can be found here, but the gist of it is this:

In 2018, I made a silly little typo while tweeting about National Novel Writing Month. I wrote #NaNoWineO instead of #NaNoWriMo. I joked about how silly this was, and how I clearly had wine on the brain. A friend joked that it should be a chat — that we could meet up online, drink wine, and talk about our NaNoWriMo projects. More friends thought that this wasn’t such a bad idea, and so we took the plunge. On Friday nights that November, we all gathered on the #NaNoWineO hashtag to drink wine and, well, whine about how our novels were coming along. As the month came to an end, some folks expressed an interest in carrying on our weekly virtual meet-ups past November. We agreed on a new name, and thus #WriteAndWine was born.

Since then, we’ve held 140 chats (& counting!) on Twitter, launched a newsletter and a Discord server, held virtual write-ins and happy hours via Zoom, partnered with small presses and indie authors for book club chats, and formed a tight-knit community of writers eager to support their fellow creatives! Our community has become an internet home for fiction writers and poets, published and emerging authors, comic book artists and musicians, bloggers and essayists, and so many more incredible creatives.

I’ve always seen #WriteAndWine/Write&W(h)ine (stylize it however you please!) as something of a double entendre. We drink wine, yes. Of course! How very writerly of us. But we also whine. And by whine, I mean vent. It’s a good and healthy unloading of emotions, thoughts, feelings. We come together and talk about our craft — about the challenges we face both on and off the page and about the struggles we have as creative people. We support one another on our creative journeys, of which mental health is a great part. As such, we strive to bring emotional awareness to our creative chats and to destigmatize discussions and expressions of mental health in creative spaces.

There’s an FAQ on our home page running through other common questions, but here’s a quick rundown:

  • No, you don’t have to drink wine, or any alcohol for that matter! We’ve had many sober chatters join us over the years, and many regulars bring their coffee, tea, and soda to chats.

  • We chat every Friday night at 8:30pm Eastern on Twitter. See our Events page for upcoming topics!

  • We have three writing-themed chats and one mental health-themed chat every month.

  • We are currently seeking guest bloggers to write on writing and mental health topics for this blog! If you’d like to pitch a guest post, please use our Contact page.

Lex Vranick

Lex Vranick is a dark fiction author and poet based in Sarasota, Florida. She holds a B.A. from Excelsior College and is a J.D. candidate at Florida State University. Her work has been published by Cagibi, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Rhonda Parrish Anthologies, and Fahrenheit Press, among others. When not writing, Lex works as a writing coach and English language tutor. She can often be found at the nearest dog park, plant shop, or record store. She apologizes for never shutting up about Wes Craven, and is always down to discuss ‘80s rock and vampire movies.

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