"A voice is a human gift... powerlessness and silence go together." ~Margaret Atwood
The Letter Reimagined Starts Tomorrow! Join us to (re)discover your fierce original voice.
Some people think voice can’t be taught (more on that in tomorrow’s post).
But I think there is little point in teaching writing at all without acknowledging the urgent necessity of identifying, exercising, and tuning the voice.
And, there is perhaps no container more apt for exercising the voice than the letter. Yes, the letter.
As the poet Paul Matthews puts it:
The letter is a most powerful form… language becomes real when real people (even if imagined) are addressed. That is why love poems and poems to God are so powerful, whereas wise literary statements addressed generally to humanity so often lack vigor.
I would go farther and say it is the reason so much writing lacks vigor—the language is not, as Matthews puts it, “real” in the way it more often becomes real when used intentionally between speaker and recipient.
Another way to put this: letters, at their best, are concrete and specific, existing within the defined world of a living relationship, and delivered in a recognizable voice meant for a particular recipient.
Again, “a recognizable voice meant for a particular recipient.”
It’s that voice—that recognizable voice—and the awareness of voice, that can elevate a letter by bringing us closer up to the language and, therefore, closer up to the world with our words.
If you are eager to activate your own voice, exercise and tune it—or possibly even start the process of truly recognizing it for the first time—you might want to write with us here at WITD through the. next four weeks of epistolary writing: The Letter Reimagined.
This intensive will be fast, playful & inventive, offering a portal into the unexpected. It’s meant to help writers of all levels out of the “same old, same old” and try some new ways into their own work.
The idea? Low stakes, high return.
We start tomorrow.
All the info you might want is below.
The Letter Reimagined: Four Weeks of Highly Specific Epistolary Writing
Like Strange Containers, The Letter Reimagined is based on the The Art of the Fractured, WITD’s cult-favorite workshop from which many published pieces emerged, some of which you can peruse here:
Born in WITD: A Big Beautiful & Growing Directory of Work Published by WITD Writers
The Letter Reimagined is for all levels and genres.
To note, The Letter Reimagined is not a writing class per se (no meetings, no Zoom, no “assignments,” etc.). It’s a WITD intensive on Substack, for which we are now “medium famous.” An intensive is where all the material is delivered through consecutive Wednesday posts, straight to your email inbox.
As long as you are a paid or founding member of WITD, you’re all set. If you’re not a member, you can upgrade anytime.
What’s Included in The Letter Reimagined?
Paid members:
Full access to all Letter Reimagined posts, sent via email on Wednesdays, and rich with readings, writing exercises, direct instruction and inspiration for trying your hand at some unusual new short work.
Access to our incredible comments—WITD comments sections are what makes this place so damn beautiful, because of the amazingness of the Writing in the Dark community. Each week, participants share questions, insights, and snippets of work in progress—and your guides, Jeannine and Billie, actively participate, as well.
Founding members also receive cool interactive stuff, like:
Occasional Voice Memos and Video Notes.
Live Write-Ins and Live Salons on Zoom w/open mic readings to celebrate the intensive when we’re done (these are so fun).
If you love more interactivity, the founding membership is probably for you—it’s only $15 more annually.
All participants come away with:
Valuable new ways to think about writing, and why we gain from stretching that way, plus specific tools to apply long after the the intensive is over.
New work in progress you can continue to develop on your own.
An archive of readings and writing exercises you can repeat as desired.
A deeper understanding of the ways epistolary writing or an “epistolary POV” can enliven your writing practice.
Join now to start poking around our giant archive and check out our thriving Thursday Threads, or explore the full archive of past WITD intensives.
What People Say About Writing in the Dark Intensives
I am in awe of how you created this amazingly beautiful community-space.
I can’t believe what I’m getting out of this intensive. It’s changing my writing in the most unexpected ways, and I am beyond grateful. You are the most generous teacher.
You are magic. Pure magic.
I have learned much from you in the last year, through your weekly posts and seasonal intensives. The depth and quality of your content is unmatched on Substack (IMHO). That, plus the network of subscribers you have garnered is why I look forward to Wednesdays! (And Mondays for Lit Salon and Thursdays for the new Threads!) I have been involved in workshops that cost more but provide less. Thanks for all you are producing and the community you have created in an effort to bring the out our best writing selves.
As always, there's more to these exercises than I first anticipate.
I’m thoroughly enjoying this challenge and truly appreciate all the ways you’re helping each of us become more thoughtful and evocative writers.
It's actually been super helpful to work through the exercises in quick succession, like a little writing course... But so much more inspiring and thoughtful and generous and fun than any I've taken before. THANK YOU Jeannine, you are brilliant.
These assignments are like magic.
Your post gave me a giant AHA moment. You’ve unlocked my understanding of tension and storytelling in memoir.
This post was wonderful. Love the first quote especially. I had a couple of deeper realizations with this exercise.
Reading all the comments on my writing today, so full of enthusiasm and encouragement, really made my day! One of the things I will treasure most about this challenge is learning to trust myself and others with my writing.3
What to Expect From The Letter Reimagined
Unusual craft essays on epistolary writing, and the space between that explore inventive approaches to short work, along with structured writing exercises to get you started on some of your own!
Inventive writing exercises that invite you to try some really unexpected new approaches on the page.
Encouragement to participate each week—it’s lively!—or work at your own pace, or start the challenge later or repeat it, or whatever works best for you, because all of the posts will be tagged and permanently archived in order.
At the end, you’ll have up to 4 original, interesting, and intriguing new pieces you can revise and consider. If we’re lucky, these new works will surprise us.
Immersion in “zero-waste” writing, where everything interesting can become something more than itself now or later.
Encouragement to record your experiences as part of the process—and you can expect to find me and Billie Oh in the comments, too, participating in the conversation.
Links to resources for further reading.
Exercises that are clear, doable, and scaffolded over the 4 weeks in a way that allows you, if you like, to “arranges the bits” toward an interesting suggestion of wholeness later.
Highly usable craft tools you can apply forever.
Specific, potent literary approaches to deepen and illuminate your relationship with language.
New discoveries about yourself and your life.
Less familiar readings as well as some crowd favorites.
Exercises that are specific and directive and clear, but also a bit feral and unpredictable. You can expect (as always in WITD) exercises that honor the truth of living in bodies that breathe and move and laugh and cry, while also living in a world that breathes and moves and laughs and cries, while also having unruly minds that are constantly escaping to the past and the future even when what we most need is to attend to this exact moment in order to live lives that are, as Mary Oliver said, “particular and real.”
To be imperfect and write imperfectly, and for that to be perfectly okay.
To come out of this intensive with new ideas about what writing can be, and how it can feel.
To come out of this intensive with new ideas of who you are, who you are becoming, and what is possible for you as a writer.
We know from the experience of Strange Containers, the Lyric Essay Challenge and Story Challenge and The Visceral Self that these things evolve and change along the way, but these are the main points as far as we can see, and I’m happy to answer questions if you have them! Just throw your thoughts into the comments.
I can’t wait to write with you. And I’m so grateful you’re here.
Love,
Jeannine
PS You can also give a gift subscription to a writer you love, or donate subscriptions to our scholarship fund, which allows us to comp subscriptions with no questions and provide a sliding-scale for our classes.
Jeannine,
I thought about this upcoming intensive just yesterday when I found out that a religious sister I knew in my twenties--a woman who influenced my formation during my coming of age--is dying of pancreatic cancer. A mutual friend reached out to me via email to share the news, ending with, "If you want to send her a card, here's her address."
I instantly fished out a blank card from my stash and thought, "I can't just write a few sentences. This woman needs to know my heart. I want her to know how much she means to me before she dies."
So, the stakes are kinda high for me on this one.
But I faltered in beginning a letter. There's so much to say, but I don't want to overwhelm her. Then again, maybe she would welcome a long letter? I'm not sure where to begin. I have some flashes of memory from my early twenties when we were exchanging intimate conversations, dialogues that invigorated and challenged me. Many of her words propelled me not to give up on my life, myself, my dreams.
All that to say, I am eager to dive in tomorrow, but also tentative. It's becoming increasingly hard for me to write about the dark things, though I don't avoid it. It's just painful.
“ You can’t find your voice if you don’t use it”!!! Forget tattoos- I am going to paint a WPA style post office mural with all the letters of permission you send us every week and every day!! Can’t wait. Singing “ … send it off in a letter to yourself…”’in my head.