Writing in the Dark Curriculum Index
The full WITD curriculum (challenges, prompts, & memos) categorized by specific intensives, genre, mood, and season so you can come back to them again & again.
A full index of WITD, and a new video post that shows you how to use it!
Can’t Find What You’re Looking For? Click Here For A Video Tutorial To Help!
Meanwhile, here on this Index you can find links to the WITD curriculum (challenges, prompts, & memos) categorized by specific intensives, post type, genre, mood, and season so you can come back to them again and again.
And if you want to be inspired first, check out our big, beautiful, very incomplete and fast-growing directory works published in journals and magazines from NYT to Brevity to Fourth Genre and many more by writers who began their writing process in a WITD workshop or with a Writing in the Dark exercise or supported by a WITD method.
Born in WITD: A Big, Beautiful Directory of Published Work
Like life, the directory AND this Curriculum Index are incomplete and works in progress! We will be updated (semi)-regularly by
—you can also share suggested updates to this index in the comments.Foundational Posts
Five Foundational Exercises Including One for Paying Attention
Eleven Urgent & Possibly Helpful Things
Shimmers & Shards: A Practice of Paying Attention to Concrete Details
What Close Reading Really Is: A Practice of Attention
A Surprising Tool For Finding Your Story’s Aboutness
How to Actually Become A Better Writer (& the problem with “workshops”)
Intensives
Most Read
How I Grew My Substack from Zero to 40K Annual Income in Just 12 Months
How I Grew My Substack from (Almost) Zero to 40K Annual Income in Just 12 Months (Pt 2)
Categories
Top Posts By Type
By Genre
By Mood
Get Devastated (in a good way)
By Where You Are
By Season
Top Posts By Type
Lit Salon
For Most of My Life, I Wrote Alone
The Paradoxical Power of The Literal
What is Embodied Writing, Anyway?
Essays
Desire Determines Who You Become
I Was a Child in a Child's Body
Some Might Have Called The Roses Garish
Writing Exercises/Prompts
The Feeling of (Highly Specific) Things
I Can See A Million Miles From Here
Voice Memos
I Don't Intend To Get Out Without A Broken Heart
Life is Short, But Desire, Desire is Long
Saying Grace, David Sedaris & Fudge-Colored Towels
The Transformative Power of Finishing
Threads
How do you feel about your mother?
The Last Time You Sang to Yourself
Life a Daring Adventure or Nothing at All
Share Something You're Happy About!
By Genre
Poetry
CNF
Fiction
Writing Fiction Should Be Scary
Editors Want "Voice" Characters That Sing
Creativity
Freeing The Dizzying Energy of the Unconscious
Mastering The Art Of (Self) Conversation
A Literary Question & Answer Game
Body-Based Writing
To Inhabit Someone Else’s Body
By Mood
Get Happy
Get Grounded
Get Grateful
Get Devastated (in a good way)
Get Brave
The Transformative Power of Finishing
Get Unstuck
The Only Technique That Helped Me Write About Trauma
Get Healing
By Where You Are
Beginnings
You Don't Necessarily Sense the Motion
Middles
In The Middle, Our Minds Play Tricks
Endings
The Transformative Power of Finishing
Revision
Thousands of Incremental Adjustments
I love this (so helpful!) - it speaks to my deep love of making lists and lists of lists to rein in the world.
Wow! Someone went through a lot of work to save me time. Thank you @Jeannine Ouellette and @Billie Oh!