How to Write in the Dark: Everything You Need to Know to Begin

From the Archives | What we do here, where to start, how to get the most from the posts + how to submit your own work

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.—E.L. Doctorow

Welcome, new members of Writing in the Dark—we’re so glad you are here! If you are also new to me and my work in general, you might enjoy my Q & A in

Sari Botton

’s Oldster Magazine, in which we discuss everything from fiber to sex to the power of writing to save our lives.

As for today’s archival post, it’s a quick tour of WITD’s innermost heart chambers and how to find your way around here, starting with our ever-growing directory of work by WITD writers published in journals from New York Times to Huffington Post to Brevity to Fourth Genre, etc.! In fact, we (try our best to) keep a directory of work Born in WITD here.

Check it out below, and if you ever have anything for me to add to this directory, please let me know!

As for how to actually write in the dark, it starts with knowing how to find your way around here and get the most value out of our offerings, with the least stress (creative friction is good, but stress over finding things, doing it “right” or “wrong” — is no fun, not helpful, and totally unnecessary here!).

This post gives a glimpse of what WITD really is (what does it mean to write in the dark?) followed by some FAQ-style info on how to find stuff and get the best value (for free and paid members).

Because we’re really glad you are here.

What does it mean to write in the dark and what is this place, anyway?

Writing in the dark means paying attention and trying to get as close up to the world as we can with our words. It means seeing playful as a portal to the profound, and vulnerability as essential to making art. Writing in the dark means befriending uncertainty and doing language in a way that goes beyond self-expression or conveying information. It means writing creatively in order to discover more truth and beauty in the world and in your life. There’s more to it—like, Keats’s theory of negative capability, which means being able to dwell in uncertainty and see beyond what you think you know—but for starters, let’s just say that writing in the dark means wanting to wake language up and make it capable of telling the truth again, make it capable of holding beauty again, make it capable of being surprising, real, and free, so that we can be, too.

Ultimately, you could say Writing in the Dark is piloting a “slow-language” movement. That’s why I have been calling our new nine-month program, WITD: THE SCHOOL, a slow-writing program for people serious about advancing their craft and joyful about doing language better in a cohort of others doing the same. It’s like, grab a cup of coffee, because we’re gonna hang out for a while. The whole “too long for email” warning? We’re not worried about it.

This WITD intro video tries to sum up what we do—and you can introduce yourself on that post, as well! And these short videos/audio love notes from WITD members also give a sense of this place. And of course we have that About Page that mostly no one looks at which is good since we’re always rewriting it and are totally overhauling it again soon. One thing we’re not is static.

Oh, and we offer writing exercises! We’re big believers in writing exercises. Ours can change not just your writing, but your life—we know, because people keep telling us.

That sounds cool, but … I still don’t get what you publish?

Oh, right! We publish four times a week:

• Mondays are for Lit Salon, where we publish essays/stories/poems or poemish things submitted by WITD readers. These must be written in response to a WITD exercise and we pay $50 for these! You can read submission guidelines here and look at an example here.

• Wednesdays are the heart of WITD—this is when our writing exercise posts come out, and if we’re in a seasonal intensive (we most recently finished The Visceral Self for embodied writing), those are really meaty! People share snippets of their work from our writing exercises and the comment threads are often 300+. It’s really fun!

• Thursdays we do community Threads, which are also super fun. A recent one was on quirks. And we’ve also started doing monthly CLASSIFIEDS, which is off to a rip-roaring start.

• Fridays, we share posts from our incredible archive, since we’re growing fast and we hate to see all that good stuff go to waste.

• Saturdays and Sundays and Tuesdays are off days, unless we have special announcements.

Do I have to be a writer to write in the dark?

No! Anyone who cares about language, and the way it shapes our lives, will benefit greatly from being here. If you want to become more aware of language and how it fundamentally alters the course of your life, you’re in the right place. That said, a great many people do end up publishing work that they start in WITD, so if that’s your goal, you’re also in the right place.

Sarah Fay

calls WITD “better than an MFA” and also included me as one of her top creative writing teachers on Substack.

Where should I start if I just signed up?

You can start wherever you are! There’s no beginning, middle, or end.

We’re mostly asynchronous with our content and there’s no right or wrong way. But since our archive is huge, we recently made a Curriculum Index to offer an easy map of what we do in the various categories, including foundational posts to get you started. We also have that intro video and a welcome thread where you can introduce yourself!

That’s a lot of content! How will I keep up?

You don’t have to! There is no “on time” or “late” here. There is no pressure. The content is there for you whenever you have the time. Here’s one way to think about it: we love Maria Popova’s Marginalian a lot! There’s a LOT of content there, too—way more than at WITD, and we can never really get to all the juiciness she offers, but that’s okay. It’s comforting to know it’s always there when we need it. (And by the way, speaking of the Marginalian, Laura McKowen of Love Story said WITD was like Mary Oliver and Rilke had a brainchild, which made my year.)

But the big difference here at WITD is that we offer our slow-famous weekly structured writing exercises, which are intensely powerful. These are exercises that can change not just your writing, but your life. In fact, the exercises will for sure change your life if you do them regularly—I know this because I hear it all the time. And I get asked about the exercises a lot, including recently in the Substack Visionary series.¹ The exercises are not just writing prompts. They are based on my twenty-five years of teaching and studying the pedagogy of how attention, playfulness (especially through constraints), and surprise remodel our writing in profound and permanent ways.

Also, unlike typical newsletters on other platforms, Writing in the Dark on Substack offers a way for you to engage with the community, which is—well, it’s hard to describe. WITD is a beautiful creative community.

Do I have to do the writing exercises? Will I still get value here if I don’t?

You never have to do anything you don’t want to do! I write a lot about the craft of writing as a metaphor for life, and how, when we think more about language and how we use it, we gradually transform how we think about life, and how we live it. You do not have to do writing exercises to be part of that. Just being here is enough.

The exercises are totally optional. They’re powerful, yes, and transformational, but always, always optional. Lots of people just read the posts, and say that, too, affects their writing and their lives. There is no right or wrong way.

If I do the exercises, do I have to share my work?

Never!

That’s always optional. A lot of people do the exercises on their own for a long time before sharing, and some never share. I know this because people tell me. People tell me a lot of stuff. I am an easy person to confide in, it turns out. But whether you do or don’t do the exercises or share your work or not, it’s totally fine. The water is always warm whenever and wherever you might want to jump (or tip-toe) in.

Most of your posts are paywalled. What do free subscribers receive? Is it worth it to stick around free?

Definitely worth it!

We love our free members. People tell us all the time that they get a ton of value from our free posts, because we do these really long previews. They’re not teasers. They’re rich and there’s huge value in them. We want you to stay free as long as you want, because lots and lots and lots of our free members (about 20% actually, which is bananas) eventually decide to become paid members, for which we are incredibly, eternally grateful.

Do you really pay for stories and essays?

Yes! We do!

And we are so excited to be doing that, because the feature itself is so empowering for writers and humans. It’s one of our best ideas so far in 2024. We would love to read your work (again, submission guidelines are here).

Is this a writing class?

No, WITD is not a writing class.

For an example of one of my writing classes, see the description of Writing in the Dark: THE SCHOOL, the inaugural season of which started last fall and concludes next month. This summer, we’re offering WITD | The CAMP at beautiful Camp Wandawega in Wisconsin. And we’ll be announcing plans for 2025 fall classes soon.

But this space, right here? This is a newsletter and a vibrant community.

Still … lots of people tell us that they learn more about writing here, and see more growth in their writing, than they have in any other “writing class” they’ve ever taken.

That rocks our world. We’re super happy about it. It makes creative writing accessible to a lot of people who can’t afford writing classes (though you should know, our classes on Zoom offer sliding scales) or don’t have access for other reasons.

I don’t get your founding level—what’s the difference between founding and paid?

We pour our hearts into the founding level, with really special extras that help us build a truly interactive and sustainable community—e.g., voice memos and video notes, live salons on zoom, candlelight yoga nidra sessions, etc.

If you value gathering with me and

Billie Oh

and other WITD members in real time, seeing faces and hearing voices, the founding level is totally worth it because it’s only nominally more per year more than a paid membership, but it all adds up to help us offer more value to more people and build a stronger, more vital community, so we really appreciate our founders a lot, a lot, a lot.

Who’s Billie Oh?

Billie Oh

is my youngest adult child, and single foster parent (soon to be adoptive parent) of our youngest grandchild, Z. Billie is my right-hand person here at WITD. Like me, they’re a writer and trained yoga teacher. Unlike me, they’re young and hip. They’re also sober, queer, nonbinary, radical, and, honestly, one of the best people I’ve ever known. They write trust fall on Substack and recently wrote about adopting Z for Huffington Post.

But mostly now they’re posting their best stuff on WITD. In the future, they’ll be building out trust fall, though. All things in a certain order, like, adopt a kid as a single parent, then figure out the rest.

Anything else?

Yes, always lots of other things, and probably millions that I am forgetting. We’re building this ship as we sail it—so there’s a lot of hammering and sawing going on as we scramble to manifest the true vastness of our vision. It’s really fun and kind of miraculous. We’re really glad you’re part of it.

And you can reach out to writing@writinginthedark.org with questions—no question is too big or too small. We’ll write back as soon as we can.

Love,
Jeannine & Billie

Craft and writing exercises are everywhere. What makes yours different? Because they are very different from most.

1. My exercises are pretty weird, I know! I use a lot of constraints–don’t get me going on the amazingness of constraints. Plenty of creative theory books talk about it. But the exercises are more than typical constraints, too. They definitely aren’t prompts, and they’re not standard lessons, either. They’re integrated with close readings of published work–close reading is an essential practice I teach in a highly specific way–so the exercises are craft-enriched and often embodied, too. People say my writing exercises fundamentally change the way they think about writing, and, over time, the way they write. The exercises can transform people’s writing permanently for the better.

Because the exercises are so precise, they often elicit work that surprises the writers. That’s what I’m going for—like, let’s try to write something new, something we weren’t expecting, instead of another version of something we’ve written before. It’s so tempting to stay in the safe lane, but the thing is, we already know how to write the way we know how to write. It’s far more exciting to try something we don’t already know, even if it might not work. Experimenting in open mode leads to breakthroughs. That’s where the exercises take us.

Essentially, the exercises build a capacity called “negative capability,” which comes from the Romantic poet John Keats and means being able to dwell in uncertainty and see past what you think you know. A huge amount of writing craft goes into the exercises, all from a slightly askew angle. 

And they’re fun!