You know that feeling when you want to write, but the day keeps expanding like bread dough on the counter—swelling with errands and emails and other people’s needs—until it finally collapses under its own weight?
We tell ourselves we’ll write when things settle down. But things rarely settle down. Life doesn’t get calmer; it just changes its disguise.
Yet—here’s the strange, saving truth—writing doesn’t demand vast stretches of time. All it requires is attention, presence, and a willingness to catch something small and true before it gets away.
That’s why I love microflash—stories that fit in your palm, or in the margin of your grocery list. I mean, Frank Gehry designed buildings on the backs of napkins!
Writing tiny things is not a compromise; it’s an act of radical focus. Because when we shrink the container, we magnify the meaning. And that’s what we’re going to do starting this November in our newest intensive for paid members: The Infinite Small: A Mircroflash Revolution.
It’s also not easier to write small. It’s … challenging in a wholly different way. When we write small, every word matters. Every image has more than one job. The parts of something tiny have to add up to far more than their sum.
Think of it this way:
A drop of essential oil can perfume a whole room.
A single line of poetry can reroute your entire day.
A single sentence can change how you see your own life.
When we write small, we distill. We strip away everything unnecessary. We get closer to the pulse. Things that are distilled are powerful. Things that are compressed are potent. Things that are micronized are full of possibility.
Writing short pieces also lowers the stakes just enough that we can slip past the inner censor. We can play, experiment, fail, and start again. And in that process—something shifts. We begin to rewrite not just the page, but the self. Because creative writing is not a luxury or an extracurricular activity. It’s a remodeling tool for the psyche. A practice of self-expansion through constraint. A way to rewire the heart’s circuitry toward curiosity and wonder.
When you write—even in the smallest doses—you strengthen the most essential relationship of all: the one between you and your own aliveness. And when you share what you make, you strengthen something equally vital: our shared humanity.
Every flash story, every fragment, every little spark becomes a filament in the web of connection that keeps us all from unraveling.
This November, we’re spinning that web together.
Join us for this six-week challenge to create small, luminous things—compressed stories, distilled truths, slivers of wonder—with a community of others doing the same.
We’ll write fast and brief, with heart and nerve. We’ll remind each other that transformation doesn’t always require a grand overhaul. Sometimes it just takes 200 words.
Because when we make time for tiny things, big things begin to move.
Join us.
Become a paid member, and spend November turning fragments into fuel, flashes into foundations, and writing—tiny though it may seem—into a force of creative renovation.
After all, even stars are small when you hold them from a distance.
The Infinite Small: A Microflash Revolution | November 5- December 10
This intensive is based partly 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 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
The Infinite Small 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 I always offer 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 Infinite Small intensive will be very accessible yet also oddly challenging and inspiring for all levels because … microflash is something altogether unique.
To note, The Infinite Small 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 November and December. 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 The Infinite Small 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. There is no need to register or sign up for anything.
What’s Included in “Strange Containers”
Paid members:
Full access to all Infinite Small 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.
Sign up 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.
If you take a leap into an annual membership—and I hope you will—you’ll give yourself the gift of commitment, the gift of time to explore the community, make friends, find a home here, and allow yourself to unfurl something new from deep within yourself, something that’s been waiting for a long time.
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 Infinite Small:
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 our many past intensives like 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!
Looking forward to this. A new creative challenge at just the right time!
Is it November yet??? Can’t wait.