...[A] letter is a joy of earth — it is denied the gods. ~Emily Dickinson, 1885

Do you want to take your writing up a level, make it better, newer, and more alive? WITD is for you. Join us for four weeks of highly specific epistolary writing, starting September 25!

Fall is such a good time to start again.

And what else, really, can we ever do but start, and start again?

Well, we can write, of course. Because we’re language-based creatures, and language is what makes us human.

Language is how we find meaning.

Language is how we understand ourselves, our lives, and our relationships each other.

Language is also, therefore, how we shape ourselves, our lives, and our relationships with others—whether we know it or not.

The more we discover and understand about the art of narrative—that is, the effects of words and the words we intentionally choose, the way we arrange them, the images we create with them, and the effects of the structures into which we pour them—the more empowered we are to write the kind of life story we really want to live.

I’m a writer, so I also publish my writing in books, anthologies, journals, etc. And I teach and coach other writers seeking to do the same—like the post I wrote about last week, detailing the WITD workshop method one writer used to get her work published in the NYT.

But, one need not identify as a “writer” to benefit profoundly from a deeper understanding of narrative, and how the tools of narrative shape our reality.

That’s why I do what I do here at Writing in the Dark. It’s deeply fulfilling to see people’s relationship with language evolve, transform, and revitalize. I love all the ways that process can unfold, and all the things it can mean, which sometimes focus on publication, and other times focus on self-discovery and healing, and very often focus on both.

As WITDers have said in the last week in their own words:

I honestly was flailing around in my attempts to progress before I found WITD, even as I was taking other writing classes/joining critique groups. Now I feel like I am getting somewhere. ~Monica, WITDer

I hope that others, who like me might be searching for their voice, find good teachers like you who encourage, appreciate, and inspire. I am learning so much more this way and finding my voice more easily than I ever have from lengthy critiques! ~Sudha, WITDer

I am in awe of how you created this amazingly beautiful community-space. And what you said several times feels so true, that the comments section is as rich as the posts themselves. I am learning so much. You give of yourself so generously to this space. ~Andrea, WITDer

Since I've joined, first as a reader and non participant, I suddenly got brave one day and jump in in the conversion, due to a writing prompt you offered. Since then I can't stop writing lol! 🤣 and its been both healing and enlightening. ~Jane, WITDer

I know that one of the reasons this place is so powerful is because we stretch hard and reach beyond the comfortable ways we already know how to write—and we do it playfully and with a sense of adventure, openness, and non-attachment.Yes, writing is powerful, but falling short of our aims on the page won’t kill us. It’s just words, I always say, not brain surgery. We’re just moving words around.

This orientation toward the work allows us to try new things, take risks on the page, and make big leaps instead of staying in our usual safe lane.

So how do we stretch and reach?

Well, one way we do it is to edge ourselves into tight spaces and defined forms so that we have no choice but to use language in a way we haven’t before. And that’s what we’ll do in the upcoming seasonal intensive for epistolary writing—we’re going to drastically expand our understanding of what a letter is and what it can do.

The Letter Reimagined starts September 25!

If you’re a paid member already, you’re all set to participate. If you’re not, you can upgrade to join.

What Will We Do In The Letter Reimagined?

We’ll read some excellent examples of the epistolary form, examples that challenge and expand staid notions of what a letter can actually do to unlock our work and magnify meaning.

As Evan Fallenberg writes about the epistolary form in Lit Hub:

[T] he writer … has the opportunity to tell a story from a single point of view, two contrasting viewpoints, or many; they can play with the reliability of the narrator(s) while deepening the reader’s reactions of sympathy (or antipathy) without moving to omniscience; and the writer … often wins over their readers more easily and wholly thanks to the nonfictional feel of letters….

To note, what Evan writes is equally applicable to CNF and fiction. In Letters Reimagined, you’ll discover how and why!

Oh, the fun we will have … such serious, impactful fun. I can’t wait to see what emerges via this elastic, surprising form reimagined.

To write a letter is to send a message to the future; to speak of the present with an addressee who is not there, knowing nothing about how that person is (in what spirits, with whom) while we write and, above all, later: while reading over what we have written. Correspondence is the utopian form of conversation because it annihilates the present and turns the future into the only possible place for dialogue. ~Ricardo Piglia, Respiración artificial

As with our recent (incredible) four weeks of Strange Containers, this intensive is based on the most popular Writing in the Dark live workshop of all time, The Art of the Fractured, which I also taught through Catapult back when Catapult still had writing classes. Art of the Fractured sold out every time it was offered, and many terrific published pieces emerged from that workshop, some of which you can peruse on our big, beautiful list of published work born in WITD:

Born in WITD: A Big Beautiful & Growing Directory of Work Published by WITD Writers

The Letter Reimagined will be fast, playful & inventive, meant to help writers break out of the same old, same old and try some new ways into their own work.

Participants can expect the kinds of craft essays and resources you always find at WITD—this time, specific to epistolary writing. Plus, inspiring resources (especially published work you might not stumble across otherwise), detailed writing exercises, and lots of opportunities to share and read each other’s work, which is a beautiful facet of this community.

The Letter Reimagined is for all levels, and equally applicable to CNF and fiction.

This intensive will be very accessible yet oddly challenging and inspiring for all levels because it’s so inventive and off-map.

To note, The Letter Reimagined is not a writing class per se (no class meetings, no Zoom, no “assignments,” etc.). It’s a WITD intensive on Substack, for which we are now what

Billie Oh

would call “medium famous.” An intensive is where all the material is delivered through four consecutive Wednesday posts, straight to your email inbox (Letters post will start September 25). I draw this distinction because I do ALSO teach writing classes! Which are different, which are tuition-based, and which are adjacent to and supported by but separate from the WITD newsletter on Substack.

Anyway, for Letter Reimagined and all of the other WITD intensives (we run several a year!), everything happens right here on the posts—so, again, as long as you are a paid or founding member of WITD, you’re all set!

You can also give a gift subscription to a writer you love, or donate subscriptions to our scholarship fund, which we appreciate so much. It allows us to comp subscriptions without any questions, and provide a sliding-scale on all of our synchronous classes.

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 face-to-face stuff, voice stuff, and more interactivity, the founding membership is for you for $15 more annually.

All participants come away with:

• A storehouse of 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.

• A collection of new work in progress that 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 maybe even dip your toe into our thriving Thursday Threads, or explore the full archive of past WITD intensives.

What People Say About Writing in the Dark Intensives

• 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.

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—which is a very lively experience—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 really surprise us.

• An immersion in the concept of “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.

I 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!

Love,
Jeannine