I'm excited about this intensive. It feels suitable for my brain. I've felt fractured in my writing lately and need some containers. I started a poem using blackout poetry to create a message about women, art, and where we are in the world of politics, something I don't spend time writing about, but it has been a way to tell my story unconventionally. My container for the poem is a piece of art. I'm not sure if you're referring to this, Jeannine, but I'm looking forward to exploring this methodology with you and this fabulous community. And I, too, love the month of August—it’s my birth month and the turn before autumn. So much to celebrate!
Yes, soul sister, we Leos have MUCH to celebrate!! 🎉💃🏻🎉 I adore your new poem and how it dresses up your already amazing Girl on Fire! 🔥🔥🔥 You have much to share and teach, my Warrior Mama friend! Love you! 😘😘😘
Hi, Barri— if you are a paid member, you do not need to do anything for Strabge Cintainers other than watch your inbox for the next four Wednesdays. That’s it! Work on your own or, if you love camaraderie, hang out in the comments, read other members’ work, and share your own!
This August round is perfect timing for me. I have a hermit that is about lose/lose with my mother as a board game. It needs revisiting.And I’ve been learning flash with Heather Sellers on CraftTalks and I love flash. Write to the bone.
Love, love, love the new logo, Billie!! 👏🏻👏🏻and, please count me in for both the intensive and the class. I’ve much to learn, and no place compares to this community! ✍🏻 📓 📚
I’m really looking forward to this. I have four themes I’ve braided into my memoir and I think this will help tighten what exists and tie together what I can’t see.
Recently I have a burning desire to write fiction on a specific strange topic (Unwed mothers homes) I recently found that there are still 450 Maternity homes in operation. I think writing in flash will be complicated and compelling! Also I have never heard of hermits but every time I see the word, I think of Hermans Hermits and my mom’s crush on Peter Noone. 😆
That’s hilarious!! I remember Herman’s Hermits! My older sisters had their records and I sang right along!! Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, and of course Henry VIII I am!! 🎉💃🏻🎉
Oh yay! This sounds fantastic and is the first intensive I will be able to put on my calendar and join in on while it’s running. I CANT WAIT. *kermit flail*
Yes! That’s such a gift. I want to go back and work through them all eventually. I’m currently making room in my calendar for more consistent writing time.
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.
Emily, you know I generally agree with about 98% of what you say, however, this time I must disagree about August - it’s my birth month, so it’s basically a monthlong celebration for this Leo!! Gotta see all of my family and friends, after all! I’m making up for only ever getting 1 pool party birthday my entire childhood, on the one August day too chilly to swim!! 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ Guess that could be a topic for a flash piece…🤔
Hahahaha- well, you have made it an even better month! And I stand corrected, and WHAT??! I want to read about all the August pool parties you missed, but the chilly one!
I was the 5th of 5….bday parties for my friends were not a priority but I think in 6th grade my mom finally realized I was always GOING to bday parties, and never ever hosting my own. So I got 1 shot, and as I said the weather gods were not smiling down on me that day. The pool was in our yard, and I don’t recall having a solid Plan B for uncooperative weather. I think we must’ve played Parchessi or Monopoly or cards….really can’t recall! Do recall getting a ceramic bank from 3 of the 5 girls in attendance. The other gifts were a ceramic oil lamp (western motif - cowboy on a horse?!?!) and a cedar wood box that contained my first diary!! It locked!! I may still have that tucked away in my basement!
The downside of having a summer birthday - my friends were always going away on family vacations, too, so even if I tried to host more parties they wouldn’t have been well-attended - such is life! I lived to tell! LOL! 🤷🏻♀️
New writing Tupperware - omg this is brilliant, Emily. Also I was going to buy a croissant today but THEY HAD CHOCOLATE CHIP BREAD PUDDING AND I THOUGHT OF YOU WITH EVERY BITE 💛🤎💛
So much of this is true for me, too, Emily. It has been so good to just write and not worry about what it's for or what it might become. It's been enough to see that things have some potential and be satisfied with that. Also, same feelings about August! My least favorite month.
I love hearing this about the writing without attachment, it is--to my mind--CRUCIAL to being able to create work we end up eventually, down the line, actually caring about because it brings us discovery and joy. Right, seeing potential should be PLENTY in the morning of writing. In the afternoon of writing, there's some bigger work to do. But if we go straight to the afternoon, it's all just recycling.
I tend to let some of what I would do in the afternoon happen a bit during my sleeping hours. Our brains work on stuff while we sleep. Often I wake up the next morning knowing what I need to edit, change, rewrite, and so on. It just happens, so I go with the flow of it.
But, I do find I still need to do hard work in the afternoon of writing. Rarely, something just solves itself in the night, but more often what gets resolved in the night is the direction, or part of it--and then I still have to do the actual work. Alas! Or, yay! It can feel both ways ....
Right, that is a whole other process. No one ever has to make it to the afternoon. But if you WANT to (everything must be driven by desire) then we have strategies for that. But the morning really must come first.
Hi, Rita! I am so happy to have found you here! And yes- I look at my empty container for my own Substack and all I feel is an enormous “Not Yet.” I may have to start calling it “ShouldStack.” I am learning so much from watching all of you incredible folks show up and share yourselves and your work in different ways. And learning permission to listen to my gut, to kick perfectionism in its annoying perfect teeth. And that August used to be a stinky month until Jeannine reclaimed it for all of us! Huzzah!
Pay close attention to how Billie and I do things, re-do them, fix them, start again. There's a balance between patience and just doing things and knowing they're just starts, and are going to have to evolve. This is how I move past perfectionism. I send stuff out with wrong dates, missing times, and that's just the beginning. I'm just saying, I work with my perfectionism by being really clear about how imperfect I am. It's freeing.
So true! I am finding that the more I write, the more the projects I start evolve into something completely different than what I had envisioned or started with. As a recovering perfectionist, at first I was confused and disconcerted by this. I am learning to let my muses guide me where they will.
Recovering perfectionist here, too! 🙋🏻♀️ Raised by 2 very precise perfectionists…..it’s been a decades long journey to unravel that particular aspect of my psyche, but I’m pretty much over it. It also helps that I no longer own my own pharmacy - that pressure only reinforced my perfectionist tendencies. Working for someone else has allowed those self-imposed expectations to be relaxed. Cannot let go of them - patients’ lives are at stake, but at least now inventory and returning expired meds and dealing with HR issues are off my To-do list! 🎉💃🏻🎉
Your ability to just go for it and keep going is an inspiration. And I see years of professional experience behind it. I am embracing that in my new gig as much as possible, and my limited energy and willingness to learn to learn new administrative tasks/ systems/ and processes is really maxed out right now. I also know I sustain new habits best when wading in rather then plunging and I really want to sustain whatever I ultimately start here. My sending thing out game has transformed working with you and I am sure my “ ShouldStack” will evolve too- it feels pending now, not impossible. Which is is a place I kind of love!
I resonate with literally all of this--and it's so beautifully stated. The admin stuff is by far the hardest for me. I am just not not not wired for it.
Thanks! Yep- not factory installed over here either!! I appreciate your sharing all the human parts in your professional capacity. Our culture, and online culture, do not encourage that or model it. I am so surprised by how little people are willing to show that vulnerability except as Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. I’m like, ok, but tell me how to actually manage that crazy conveyor belt because that is what I am actually trying to do!!
And I have a REALLY hard time learning new admin things. I ask for a lot lot lot of help from Billie in this realm--Billie has an ease with computer processes and tools. I watch them and I am like HOW DID YOU DO THAT.
Oh, I really love this so much, Emily. So so much. Re August, I have a LOT of things to say about August. Might need to write about it--it's a big big month in my biography!
Hahaha thank you, Angela. I have been meaning to respond to your email, too. I know our The Feeling workshop was intense! I get so excited about understanding the language in the work that I sometimes forget--not really, like, I'm actually crying, but--I step into/through that we're also all devastated by it, even though I also am, in order to get hold of the language. I think it is one of those gift/glitch paradoxes. I will say, though, that School will not move nearly so fast. We will have nine months to take our time. I feel like I am going to need to give people a disclaimer about that. xoxo
I actually just had a question/idea come up: I wonder if it would be possible/feasible to have break out groups in which students close read their work alongside a smaller group of writers throughout the 9 months? I’m not sure what the total enrollment will be, but I do know a ton amazing work is generated WITD and it can be a challenge to keep up with all of it! I hope this makes sense.
Yes, actually, that is EXACTLY what we want to help facilitate through School. Not everyone will want that, so we will not do it during our class time, but what we will do is create a process through which people in School can find groups that want to do similar things--whether it's take the close reading farther, workshop/discuss their own work (probably separate groups for book-length vs short pieces), and other aims, as well, e.g., there might be a group that wants to do a book study of an excellent craft book that gets referenced in School, that kind of thing. So, in short, yes! We'll start the sorting hat process during the first month of School.
I am paid. But still ever so confused. 🥸
Barri, have you checked out this post, and our About page? https://writinginthedark.substack.com/p/how-to-actually-write-in-the-dark?utm_source=publication-search
I'm excited about this intensive. It feels suitable for my brain. I've felt fractured in my writing lately and need some containers. I started a poem using blackout poetry to create a message about women, art, and where we are in the world of politics, something I don't spend time writing about, but it has been a way to tell my story unconventionally. My container for the poem is a piece of art. I'm not sure if you're referring to this, Jeannine, but I'm looking forward to exploring this methodology with you and this fabulous community. And I, too, love the month of August—it’s my birth month and the turn before autumn. So much to celebrate!
Yes, soul sister, we Leos have MUCH to celebrate!! 🎉💃🏻🎉 I adore your new poem and how it dresses up your already amazing Girl on Fire! 🔥🔥🔥 You have much to share and teach, my Warrior Mama friend! Love you! 😘😘😘
Love you too! 🙌🏻❤️
I am new and so confused about links and how to be part of these?
Hi, Barri— if you are a paid member, you do not need to do anything for Strabge Cintainers other than watch your inbox for the next four Wednesdays. That’s it! Work on your own or, if you love camaraderie, hang out in the comments, read other members’ work, and share your own!
This August round is perfect timing for me. I have a hermit that is about lose/lose with my mother as a board game. It needs revisiting.And I’ve been learning flash with Heather Sellers on CraftTalks and I love flash. Write to the bone.
Yay, I am looking forward to writing with you!
Forgive the question but do we need to do anything specific to join this, other than be a paid subscriber?
You do not need anything else at all! Just to be a paid member gives you access. Thank you for asking!
Love, love, love the new logo, Billie!! 👏🏻👏🏻and, please count me in for both the intensive and the class. I’ve much to learn, and no place compares to this community! ✍🏻 📓 📚
We can share our processes, I’m in too!
Yes! It’s a go!
Looking forward to this!
Yay, I look forward to writing with you, Matt!
I’m really looking forward to this. I have four themes I’ve braided into my memoir and I think this will help tighten what exists and tie together what I can’t see.
Recently I have a burning desire to write fiction on a specific strange topic (Unwed mothers homes) I recently found that there are still 450 Maternity homes in operation. I think writing in flash will be complicated and compelling! Also I have never heard of hermits but every time I see the word, I think of Hermans Hermits and my mom’s crush on Peter Noone. 😆
That’s hilarious!! I remember Herman’s Hermits! My older sisters had their records and I sang right along!! Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, and of course Henry VIII I am!! 🎉💃🏻🎉
Haha yes!!!
Omg I’m beyond excited for this one. Love the new logo!!
Thank you! We are playing around (Billie doing all the heavy lifting). It's getting there and we are excited!
I can not wait for this!!!
This is coming at the perfect time. Can't wait to dive in. 🫶
How exciting!! 🎉
So looking forward to this!!
Yay, Bailey!
Oh yay! This sounds fantastic and is the first intensive I will be able to put on my calendar and join in on while it’s running. I CANT WAIT. *kermit flail*
hahahaha *kermit flail* I love it! 🐸
I meant to say, they’re archived forever but of course it’s most fun to do them in real time!
Yes! That’s such a gift. I want to go back and work through them all eventually. I’m currently making room in my calendar for more consistent writing time.
Yay!
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.
Emily, you know I generally agree with about 98% of what you say, however, this time I must disagree about August - it’s my birth month, so it’s basically a monthlong celebration for this Leo!! Gotta see all of my family and friends, after all! I’m making up for only ever getting 1 pool party birthday my entire childhood, on the one August day too chilly to swim!! 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ Guess that could be a topic for a flash piece…🤔
Hahahaha- well, you have made it an even better month! And I stand corrected, and WHAT??! I want to read about all the August pool parties you missed, but the chilly one!
I was the 5th of 5….bday parties for my friends were not a priority but I think in 6th grade my mom finally realized I was always GOING to bday parties, and never ever hosting my own. So I got 1 shot, and as I said the weather gods were not smiling down on me that day. The pool was in our yard, and I don’t recall having a solid Plan B for uncooperative weather. I think we must’ve played Parchessi or Monopoly or cards….really can’t recall! Do recall getting a ceramic bank from 3 of the 5 girls in attendance. The other gifts were a ceramic oil lamp (western motif - cowboy on a horse?!?!) and a cedar wood box that contained my first diary!! It locked!! I may still have that tucked away in my basement!
What wonderful details!
The downside of having a summer birthday - my friends were always going away on family vacations, too, so even if I tried to host more parties they wouldn’t have been well-attended - such is life! I lived to tell! LOL! 🤷🏻♀️
Same same same 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼no bits left over. 😍
💜
New writing Tupperware - omg this is brilliant, Emily. Also I was going to buy a croissant today but THEY HAD CHOCOLATE CHIP BREAD PUDDING AND I THOUGHT OF YOU WITH EVERY BITE 💛🤎💛
Hahahahaha! You are my vicarious gluten goddess!!
“Vicarious gluten goddess” 😂
💜💜💜
Hahahaha I mean you just keep putting all these good food ideas out there. And I show my love through (eating) food 💕🥘
Food is my music of love 😂
So much of this is true for me, too, Emily. It has been so good to just write and not worry about what it's for or what it might become. It's been enough to see that things have some potential and be satisfied with that. Also, same feelings about August! My least favorite month.
I love hearing this about the writing without attachment, it is--to my mind--CRUCIAL to being able to create work we end up eventually, down the line, actually caring about because it brings us discovery and joy. Right, seeing potential should be PLENTY in the morning of writing. In the afternoon of writing, there's some bigger work to do. But if we go straight to the afternoon, it's all just recycling.
I tend to let some of what I would do in the afternoon happen a bit during my sleeping hours. Our brains work on stuff while we sleep. Often I wake up the next morning knowing what I need to edit, change, rewrite, and so on. It just happens, so I go with the flow of it.
I’m an overnight ruminator, as well! I have such clear, vivid dreams most nights. I work a lot of stuff out there! It’s a gift, for sure!
But, I do find I still need to do hard work in the afternoon of writing. Rarely, something just solves itself in the night, but more often what gets resolved in the night is the direction, or part of it--and then I still have to do the actual work. Alas! Or, yay! It can feel both ways ....
Agree. I still have do mostly do the hard afternoon work.
Yes, this is science. I do this too--I ask my brain to work on it while I am sleeping. A lot happens in the night.
And I never make it to the afternoon!
Right, that is a whole other process. No one ever has to make it to the afternoon. But if you WANT to (everything must be driven by desire) then we have strategies for that. But the morning really must come first.
I'm interested to learn what your strategies are for the afternoon. Think I could use some new/better ones.
Hi, Rita! I am so happy to have found you here! And yes- I look at my empty container for my own Substack and all I feel is an enormous “Not Yet.” I may have to start calling it “ShouldStack.” I am learning so much from watching all of you incredible folks show up and share yourselves and your work in different ways. And learning permission to listen to my gut, to kick perfectionism in its annoying perfect teeth. And that August used to be a stinky month until Jeannine reclaimed it for all of us! Huzzah!
Pay close attention to how Billie and I do things, re-do them, fix them, start again. There's a balance between patience and just doing things and knowing they're just starts, and are going to have to evolve. This is how I move past perfectionism. I send stuff out with wrong dates, missing times, and that's just the beginning. I'm just saying, I work with my perfectionism by being really clear about how imperfect I am. It's freeing.
So true! I am finding that the more I write, the more the projects I start evolve into something completely different than what I had envisioned or started with. As a recovering perfectionist, at first I was confused and disconcerted by this. I am learning to let my muses guide me where they will.
Recovering perfectionist here, too! 🙋🏻♀️ Raised by 2 very precise perfectionists…..it’s been a decades long journey to unravel that particular aspect of my psyche, but I’m pretty much over it. It also helps that I no longer own my own pharmacy - that pressure only reinforced my perfectionist tendencies. Working for someone else has allowed those self-imposed expectations to be relaxed. Cannot let go of them - patients’ lives are at stake, but at least now inventory and returning expired meds and dealing with HR issues are off my To-do list! 🎉💃🏻🎉
Your ability to just go for it and keep going is an inspiration. And I see years of professional experience behind it. I am embracing that in my new gig as much as possible, and my limited energy and willingness to learn to learn new administrative tasks/ systems/ and processes is really maxed out right now. I also know I sustain new habits best when wading in rather then plunging and I really want to sustain whatever I ultimately start here. My sending thing out game has transformed working with you and I am sure my “ ShouldStack” will evolve too- it feels pending now, not impossible. Which is is a place I kind of love!
I resonate with literally all of this--and it's so beautifully stated. The admin stuff is by far the hardest for me. I am just not not not wired for it.
Thanks! Yep- not factory installed over here either!! I appreciate your sharing all the human parts in your professional capacity. Our culture, and online culture, do not encourage that or model it. I am so surprised by how little people are willing to show that vulnerability except as Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. I’m like, ok, but tell me how to actually manage that crazy conveyor belt because that is what I am actually trying to do!!
And I have a REALLY hard time learning new admin things. I ask for a lot lot lot of help from Billie in this realm--Billie has an ease with computer processes and tools. I watch them and I am like HOW DID YOU DO THAT.
Oh, I really love this so much, Emily. So so much. Re August, I have a LOT of things to say about August. Might need to write about it--it's a big big month in my biography!
I can’t wait to read it. I am ready.💜
💜
I love all of this! And a big YES to the looking forward to August when it’s usually the equivalent of Sunday!
Hahaha thank you, Angela. I have been meaning to respond to your email, too. I know our The Feeling workshop was intense! I get so excited about understanding the language in the work that I sometimes forget--not really, like, I'm actually crying, but--I step into/through that we're also all devastated by it, even though I also am, in order to get hold of the language. I think it is one of those gift/glitch paradoxes. I will say, though, that School will not move nearly so fast. We will have nine months to take our time. I feel like I am going to need to give people a disclaimer about that. xoxo
And that’s good to know about School. I will gave that some serious consideration!
It will be easier to consider when we finalize the description! 😅
I actually just had a question/idea come up: I wonder if it would be possible/feasible to have break out groups in which students close read their work alongside a smaller group of writers throughout the 9 months? I’m not sure what the total enrollment will be, but I do know a ton amazing work is generated WITD and it can be a challenge to keep up with all of it! I hope this makes sense.
Yes, actually, that is EXACTLY what we want to help facilitate through School. Not everyone will want that, so we will not do it during our class time, but what we will do is create a process through which people in School can find groups that want to do similar things--whether it's take the close reading farther, workshop/discuss their own work (probably separate groups for book-length vs short pieces), and other aims, as well, e.g., there might be a group that wants to do a book study of an excellent craft book that gets referenced in School, that kind of thing. So, in short, yes! We'll start the sorting hat process during the first month of School.
A gift/glitch paradox, what a concept! 😍
I feel like the gift/glitch paradox is the story of my life.
Thank you- thanks for taking the wild rides with me!
It’s a privilege! ❤️❤️
Same!