Do Writing Teachers Prey on People's Dreams?

Here's the complicated answer + A growing directory of work published in lit journals, mags & anthologies by WITD writers + What's next at WITD (i.e., how to REALLY Write in the Dark)

Me at Stout’s Island in 2014, teaching my second-ever 5-night writing retreat & still fending off imposter syndrome while waiting for the writers to arrive at the dock (yes, by boat!)

Great news! I have a long-form essay coming out next month at The Rumpus Voices on Addiction, yay! It got approved Sunday. It’s a doozie at 4K words. I can’t wait to share it with you. And just now,

Billie Oh

got a personal essay accepted at HuffPo, so watch for that soon, too!

Meanwhile, to the question at hand: Do writing teachers prey on people’s dreams?

It seems like this same old debate erupts every now and then, usually on places like Twitter/X, with someone questioning whether anyone can or should teach writing—like, whether all teaching of writing is essentially bogus and predatory and self-serving. Whether writing can even be taught in the first place. Whether all the people claiming to teach writing are just wannabes charging money for their worthless teaching of a skill they themselves lack, which is the skill of writing well enough to make a living by writing rather than by earning income through the teaching of writing.

It’s an interesting question.

Before we dive into answering it, or trying to, I do want to say one thing loud and clear:

Being a writer, even being a very serious writer, is not the same as earning a living as a writer. The two can and do overlap for some but by no means all writers. Not earning a living as a writer does not make you less of a writer.

Here’s an example of the above. I am currently providing developmental editing for an incredible writer who worked her whole career as a successful trial attorney. She is now an award-winning literary writer, published novelist, and, frankly, she’s brilliant. I mean, brilliant. I think maybe the reason she’s even working with an editor is because writing is so damn lonely and an editorial guide can be a balm and a voice of reason. Anyway. She is absolutely a writer, and a damn good one, but she in no way earns her living as a writer.

And this is more a statement about the state of publishing and what this writer chooses to write (lyric, poetic work), not her talent or ambition or skill or seriousness as a writer. I’m definitely not the best one to comment on the economics of publishing, though—a lot of people on the inside of that machine have far more nuanced things to say about the alarming rate of negative change for writers trying to support themselves writing books. Christine Sneed just wrote about this recently, in her post, Making Money As A Writer.

However, I can tell you I’ve been successfully hacking away at this writing thing for thirty-five years, and I’ve been earning a full-time living at it for at least the last 25 of those years, usually while doing other jobs a the same time. I am one helluva worker, if nothing else. Being raised working poor will do that to you.

For a long time, I worked as a magazine editor, and that was always supplemented by writing contract educational books (and one children’s picture book), lots of narrative journalism (back when that kind of writing paid $2/word!), technical writing, ghostwriting, and, yes, the dreaded “content” when that kind of work ballooned in the early 2000s. With all this combined, I always earned the equivalent of a full-time income. A single grant often paid up to $10K, because, well, writing federal grants is kind of like living in hell for six or eight weeks at a time. The ghostwriting projects were more fun and paid $30K and up.

The problem was, I was earning a good living doing all kinds of writing I didn’t want to do (except the children’s book and the narrative journalism) and none of the writing I did want to do.

So, the amount I am paid (or not) for my writing is simply not the rubric I use to determine its value or “realness,” or to determine whether I am a serious writer who can write. And it’s also not the rubric I use to determine, for that matter, whether I can have the audacity to teach writing.

No, I measure my worth quite differently.

Back to the preying on dreams question. It’s an interesting debate, because anyone who teaches writing can tell you that there really are some bogus and predatory “classes” and “coaching” out there. And there really are some—maybe even many—people offering writing services who lack the skills for which they are charging other writers. One of my advisors in grad school referred to it all, including the proliferation of MFA programs (which far outstrip the number of reasonable opportunities to publish and/or teach at the college level), as the “creative writing industrial complex.”

She was not wrong.

People who want to write well—and especially people who want to publish their work—do have dreams. And they have desire, which is crucial to writing well, but also, dangerous. Because desire is fueled by what Jane Hirshfield calls “heat”—and, listen, anyone who’s ever felt heat can tell you this: it makes you vulnerable, it makes you hungry. Heat makes you willing to pay.

And that makes room for predation.

So, that’s the first part of the answer to the question of whether writing teachers prey on people’s dreams: sometimes, yes.

But look, the answer is also, no.

Because there are a whole lot of other people out there—and, yes, I count myself among them—who are teaching writing in an ethical way. I would study with Dorothy Allison or George Saunders any day of the week because they are as brilliant as the sun, period. But I also learn tons from less famous writers like Kathy Fish, mary g, Nina Schuyler, and Laurie Stone, all of whom are here on Substack writing about writing in really interesting ways.

As forWriting in the Dark, I make no promises about publication or what will become of anyone’s work in the end. That would be ridiculous and unethical. Only you can control what happens to your work in the end, and, even then, you yourself have only so much control! We all have only so much control. It’s a tough world out there. My motto is, keep doing the work, and work really hard. Take it seriously. Show up.

That’s why I start with attention and the concept of playful as the portal to the profound. I value surprise (little is worse than being bored) and I teach on the basis of close reading and constraints, so that our work becomes more feral and harder to direct, more alive and strange and prone to bucking and bolting. I like risks. I like new things. I like creative writing. So I don’t teach toward commercial conventions or trends; I teach passionately toward the art of doing language in a way you haven’t done it before. I don’t believe you have just “one voice.” I believe we have a right and maybe even an obligation to explore a multiplicity of voices—voices we get to listen for and sing into, voices we get to sand down, fire up, or drag out of the shadows. Voice is an instrument. It plays more than one melody. Otherwise, what’s the point?

My only promise here, ever, is that we will work hard together to do language better by taking up the study of writing in such a way that it might improve not just our writing, but our lives. And that we will allow ourselves to enjoy it, because joy matters. Again, if it’s joyless, what’s the point?

Of course, if you are a writer who’s completing and submitting work for publication, like I do, and you want to use what you learn at WITD improve your skills over time, make better work, and increase your odds of acceptance, that’s great. Many WITD writers do just that. One said so just last week, writing to me the following:

I’d never before heard the term “about-ness” before my first class with you. That’s also when I began to realize that I needed to understand the about-ness of my essays, even the winding lyrical ones, before sending them out on submission. My acceptance rate increased dramatically after incorporating that learning into my writing process.

In fact, at the end of this post, you’ll see a very incomplete and fast-growing directory of work by WITD writers that they shaped from one of my posts + exercises or classes. This pipeline from WITD to publication is something that Melissa Greenwood wrote about in a detailed way about last week, also, in her Hippocampus Profile of Writing in the Dark (and me).

All this said, publishing your work in literary journals or magazines—or even writing and publishing books!—does not mean you will earn a living as a writer. As soon as I started writing the kind of work I cared about—this was around 2010—my “pay” as a writer went down. Way down. This coincided with leaving a full-time teaching job and starting work on my first book (slowly) alongside literary essays and short stories, and, eventually, there I was, paying $3 a pop on Submittable for the privilege of seeking to publish in journals that in turn paid nothing. I also applied to MFA programs and started one in 2015, using my record of publication in lieu of an undergraduate degree, which I did not and do not have. I took out loans for the MFA, too. Just think: all those years of writing for pay, and often quite high pay, and then … I was the one paying, or borrowing, for a chance to write. Luckily, by then I had a full-time writing and teaching position at the University of Minnesota. I am grateful for my day job, so that I don’t have to require my art to pay my bills.

My memoir, The Part That Burns, is a good example of art not paying the bills. TPTB was published in 2021 to outstanding critical reviews (stars from both Kirkus and PW), and it’s been a good little seller, too. But if I were to try to support myself on those royalties, well, I’d be sleeping on your couch. Ultimately, earning a living as a writer is complicated, and most of us patch our lives together through some combination of book advances/royalties, speaking and teaching, and side hustles or day jobs. And now, thanks to Substack, some of us are also earning significant income from our words here—both through writing and teaching.

But none of that is guaranteed. And I would be the last to promise it. Writers cobble professional lives together in all sorts of ways, from pretty “traditional” to really weird, and what works for one writer isn’t necessarily the best path for another. I don’t coach writers on the business of writing, because I’m just not that interested in business, even though I take my own business seriously. It’s the art that matters to me—that’s where my passion lies—so that’s the part I teach, leaving the commerce coaching to people with more oomph for it.

It’s also fine—I mean, more than fine—to just write for the sheer fun and joy of it, and it’s fine—I mean, more than fine—to take writing classes or workshops or subscribe to writing newsletters like this one for the sheer fun and joy of it. Not everyone has to be trying to “make something” out of their writing. Writing for the sake of reveling in what language can do is more than enough.

Why?

Because joy is actually allowed in our lives. Art is allowed. Creating is allowed. We are allowed in our own lives. And we’re allowed to create together, too. Why? Because it’s fun and feels amazing. And we have absolutely nothing to prove.

Creativity is our human birthright. Never forget that. And never let anyone make you feel small or not good enough for a place at the table of language as an art. This table is ours—all of ours.

Last but not least, I have often acknowledged that when I first started teaching creative writing back in 2012, I was nervous. Who would come? Would I be able to share knowledge or inspire people? Could I offer concrete, usable tools? I knew I could write. And I knew I could teach, too, from my ten years of elementary and middle school teaching plus the substantial parent education that went along with that in a Waldorf school. But, still, I knew teaching creative writing would be different. And when I opened registration for my first 5-night writing retreat in 2013, I definitely felt some real imposter syndrome, which I talked about with Amy Eaton at Hippocampus a few years ago. But, as it turned out, that retreat was astonishing. And it changed my life for the better in ways I could never have imagined. Since then, every retreat, class, workshop, and, now, Substack post keeps doing the same.

I love teaching. I simply love it.

I teach writing at the University of Minnesota, in prisons, and in beautiful retreat settings. I also teach writing for other people—like, Catapult back in the day (wah!), Brooke Warner’s Magic of Memoir series, Hidden Timber’s Author Series, and more. And, of course, I teach my own WITD workshops on Zoom (and here on Substack, which is different, and which I’ll say more about in a minute).

Through teaching, I have built a community of writers and genuine friends, a creative community like none other I’ve ever been part of, a community of people who care about language as much as I do. Who ware willing to make language “capable of telling the truth again” as Wendell Berry says we must.

I love teaching here on Substack, especially in our seasonal intensives for paid members (next one starts in August and will be a four-week flash immersion where we’ll blast through four different “containers” for flash in four weeks, inspired in part by Jane Alison’s brilliant book, Meander, Spiral, Explode and Kim Adrian’s The Shell Game—super fun!). To note, though, these WITD intensives on Substack are not “classes” or “courses.” It’s a little confusing, because even Sarah Fay says that Writing on the Dark on Substack is like “getting an MFA for practically nothing.” And while that may very well be true, the Substack posts are still not classes.

Outside of but adjacent to Substack, I do teach writing classes for which I charge tuition. In fact, I LOVE teaching live, synchronous classes in person and on Zoom and haven’t been doing enough of it since launching Writing in the Dark on Substack, because, well, WITD grew so fast and furiously that it took some real time to keep up with it. But I’ve gotten my footing now, and am back to teaching synchronous classes. I am teaching one this Thursday, in fact, but it’s completely full.

My next one opens for registration on July 8. This one is a reimagined Writing in the Dark synchronous workshop much like the one that started all this! It will start this fall for nine months—we’re calling it WITD: The School. It’s for writers who want to accelerate their progress, who want to study synchronously on Zoom, and who want to work hard toward writing well enough to be published. No, I cannot guarantee that you will be published if you enroll in The School! No one can! If anyone tries to promise you that, run. But I can tell you that The School will be rigorous and the teaching will be based on close reading and aimed at publication, so if you work hard, your writing will improve in that direction. And you don’t have to be trying to publish in order to enroll in School, either. You just have to want to work hard enough on your writing that it will move toward that aim. School will be rigorous and fun and valuable and kind of wild. And oh, we also have visiting writers and editors lined up. I can’t wait. Again, watch for the announcement and enrollment details on July 8.

One last thing: Substack (and the world itself) is a big, beautiful place. There’s room for lots of people to be doing all kinds of different things here. That’s part of what makes it so amazing. At our live Visceral Self salon with open mic readings last week (which was amazing, btw), I said—and I meant it—we’re living in extraordinary times. The tools we have for being in community are simply astonishing. We are so lucky. Substack is unbelievable in terms of what we can do together here. The internet is a miracle. The world may be a hard, imperfect place, but I also feel so fortunate to be alive right now. I can in all earnestness say I have more connection and love in my life than at any time ever before, and myWriting in the Dark community is a big part of why.

In closing, I want you to know that I take your investment of trust, time, attention, effort, sharing of work, and, yes, for those of who pay for subscriptions here or tuition for my classes, then your money, very seriously. I will never offer anything I don’t truly believe I can deliver with added value, and I will never try to sell you anything bogus.

Writing in the Dark is a place for people who believe in the power of language to change lives. That’s why I teach. That’s also how I teach. It’s the only way I know how.

Thank you for being here. It means the whole damn world.

Love,
Jeannine

Born in WITD: A Big, Beautiful, Growing (& Very Incomplete) Directory of Published Work by WITD Writers

*if you have something that should be on this list, email writing@writinginthedark.org—we just started building this & we know it’s very incomplete!

• American Crow, Fourth Genre, Tyler Lewke

• BEARING WEIGHT, Doctor T J Eckleburg Review, Tamara DeLand

• BENT, Calyx, 2019 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing First Runner-Up, Billie Oh with Jeannine Ouellette

• Beneath The Break, So To Speak, nominated for Pushcart Prize, Billie Oh

• What Being a Foster Dad Taught Me About Saying Yes to Life, HuffPo, (forthcoming), Billie Oh

• Beyond Words Literary, Angie Wright

• Centipedes, etc., Sweet, Heidi Fettig Parton

• Chipping Sparrows Tell Tales of Joy and Sorrow, Does It Have Pockets, Billie Hinton

• Colored Pencils, Longridge Review, Melissa Greenwood

• Contours, A Literary Landscape (anthology), Kristine Kopperud

• Everything You Hold Onto In Your Body Lets Go, Riverteeth Journal’s Beautiful Things column, Billie Hinton

• extra tofu, Cosmic Double, Billie Oh

• The Game Was To Guess The Words, Writing in the Dark’s Lit Salon, Jocelyn Lovelle

• Jaw Wiring: What You Need to Know, Sweet Lit, by Kristine Kopperud

• Journey, NC Jung Society’s Annual Poetry Contest (3rd place) , later published in Streetlight Mag, Billie Hinton

• Kitchen, Fully Updated, Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities, Kristine Kopperud

• Kitchen Instincts, Hippocampus Magazine, Suzanne Orrell, nominated for Best of the Net

• Help, Please, Longridge Review, Melissa Greenwood

• HOLDING HANDS, Matter Press, Amy Goldmacher

• Homebound, Wanderlust, Tamara DeLand

• Hue and Cry, Barely South Review, Angie Wright

• Lip Service, Awakenings Anthology, Melody Greenfield

• Longing Is Not Regret, Citron Review, Billie Hinton

• Losing Your Identity, "Heartbeat, and dis·so·lu·tion, Fevers of the Mind, Miri Gould

• Lunar Blue, Lumina, Krystyna Sznurkowski

• madame slant, Cosmic Double, Billie Oh

• Moon, Book of Matches, Katie Vinson, nominated for Best of the Net

• My Renter, My Friend, New York Times, Amy Stonestrom

• On Injustice (For My Sister-In-Law), Writing in the Dark’s Lit Salon, Sarah Orman

• The Once Wife, Brevity, Heidi Fettig Parton, nominated for Best American Essays

• Passing the Torch, Yellow Arrow Journal, Michelle Levy

• Pacemaker of the Heart, failbetter, nominated for Pushcart Prize, Billie Hinton

• Places I Went With My Dad, LongRidge Review, Billie Hinton

• Remedy For An Excited Amygdala, Streetlight Mag’s Street Talk column, Billie Hinton

• Rock Star, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Heidi Fettig Parton

• She Wants To Swim With Narwhals, Permafrost, Billie Hinton

• Stealing Light, Streetlight Mag’s 2020 Essay Contest 3rd Place, Billie Hinton

• Swallows, JMWW, Billie Hinton

• Threads, Minerva Rising’s Keeping Room, Billie Hinton

• To The Grassy Bald We Named Sweet Bay, The Hopper, nominated for Pushcart Prize, Billie Hinton

• An Unraveling, fugue, Heidi Fettig Parton

• Unmoored, Fevers of the Mind, Miri Gould

• Uses for a Mouth,  Gold Man Review, nominated for Pushcart Prize, Melody Greenfield

• View from the Backseat, Mutha Magazine, Kristine Kopperud

• We Are The Charm, Riverfeet Press’ Awake In The World print anthology v. 3, Billie Hinton

• Why Life Is Crazy But Manages Also To Be Beautiful, Door Is A Jar, Summer 2024 print journal, Billie Hinton

• We Were Married? Dorothy Parker's Ashes, Angie Wright

• What If? League of Minnesota Poets (forthcoming), Rachel Netwal Guvenc

• Why...Because, The Ravens Perch, Miri Gould

• When Wishes Turn Real, Hippocampus Magazine, Melissa Greenwood

• The Weekend Breakfast, Zoetic Press, Melissa Greenwood

• Yielding, The Citron Review, Angie Wright

• 8 LESSONS I’VE LEARNED FROM YOU, MOTHER, A Moon of One's Own, Miri Gould