Strange Containers: Flash, Hermits & Other Oddities
Four Weeks of Highly Specific Flash Writing Starts August 7! Join Us!
“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
There are millions of ways to tell stories, and sometimes, a straight line from start to finish is not the best or most beautiful option. Sometimes, we can tell our stories in pieces. Fragmented, nonlinear, and other inventive forms can be both powerful and artful. Plus, it’s fun!
Strange Containers, the next WITD seasonal intensive, starts August 7, and we’ll read some outstanding flash—short, fragmented and broken things in strange containers—and study the techniques behind these nontraditional forms.
Then we’ll gather bits and pieces of our own stories and begin to list, braid, collage, erase, and rearrange these items into... something else. We’ll examine how to combine multiple subjects, images, and motifs within a single piece, and we’ll look at how fragmented structures can add complexity and amplify meaning without confusing the reader.
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 single time it was offered, and many terrific published pieces were born in that workshop, some of which you can peruse on this big, beautiful list of published work born in WITD:
Born in WITD: A Big Beautiful & Growing Directory of Work Published by WITD Writers
Strange Containers 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 you usually find from me here at WITD, plus inspiring resources (especially the readings of 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 Strange Containers intensive will be very accessible yet also oddly challenging and inspiring for all levels because … it’s just so weird.
To note, Strange Containers is not a writing class per se (there are no class meetings, no Zoom, no “assignments,” etc.), it’s an intensive on Substack, where all the material is delivered through four consecutive Wednesday posts in August. 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 Strange Containers and all of the other WITD intensives (we run several a year!), everything happens right here on the posts, and all you need to do is be a paid or founding member of WITD—so if you already are, you’re all set for this adventure! Your subscription is all you need to participate.
What’s Included in “Strange Containers”
Paid members:
Full access to all Strange Container 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 extra cool stuff that’s interactive, like:
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).
All participants come away with:
A storehouse of valuable new ways to think about approaching short work, and why we might want to, 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 flash and hermit crab readings and writing exercises that you can repeat as desired.
A deeper understanding of the ways these forms can work to 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 Strange Containers:
Unusual craft essays on flash, fragmentation, hermit crabs, 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 of flash or hermits (or something in between!) that you can revise and consider. If we’re lucky, these new works will really surprise you.
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 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 now from the experience of 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 or respond via email to this post.
I cannot wait to write with you!
Strange, weird, feral, laugh, cry, surprise, community— so many of the key words that make my heart beat faster for August.
Speaking of containers, I realize when I write a snippet that I feel excited about I often wonder, “where can I put this.?” ( I do that less often now) The where can shut me down in organizing the scenes of long fiction I am attempting, too- will I ever find this again? What is a safe place to put it so it does not get lost? But I realized today ( warning, incoming Saturday rhapsodic waxing), I am really really good at grabbing the right sized soup container for leftover soup, bread pudding, or that blunt piece of zucchini- not too much air space, but enough to breathe and be recognizable when it is opened again, and no bits leftover.
I realized WITD has become my container for myself in the spirit of all those opening words. My safe space to put those parts of me, along with the rest. I am beginning to see how searching for the right container really stifled my work. But now, I can plop this practically unhinged comment right here and know many of you will understand. I let my soup tell me which container it wants so I am looking forward to new writing Tupperware!!! I have never looked forward to August— it is the month equivalent of a Sunday school night, so this is so welcome. And you are redeeming my back to school feelings on a nuclear level, too.
The more you share, the better it sounds! Looking forward to it! 🐚🦀
I have a hermit crab essay in the form of a recipe I’d love to come back to. I was happy with it at the time I originally called it “finished” and submitted it multiple times with no luck. Reading it now I think it’s missing something!