Welcome.
When you’re ready to get acclimated around here, start with these two posts:
1. How to Actually Write in the Dark: Everything You Need to Know To Begin
Meanwhile, what you need to know is that writing saved my life, so I teach writing as if it might save yours.
That guiding principal, like the deepest source waters beneath all the craft talk about creative nonfiction and fiction and poetry and the practical tools to write better, is what it really means to write in the dark.
Writing in the Dark is about embracing the fundamental truth of uncertainty through a consistent practice of attention, curiosity, playfulness, surprise, and vulnerability—and thereby discovering the immense power, beauty, and transformation we engender when we do so.
Art critic Ben Eastham says it this way:
Art today is less about the formal or aesthetic properties of an object than a way of talking about the intricately entangled, increasingly unstable world in which we live.
This “word art” we do when we write is a way of talking about the “intricately entangled, increasingly unstable” selves in which we live.
My philosophy of writing, and of life, is that we are human beings, not human beens. We are always becoming, and writing in the dark invites the fullness of our unfolding. For that, we must remain open to the unknown. Which, in the end, is the art of writing in the dark.
This five-minute video made by
explains it further. We really, really hope you like it (along with this new video, which shows you how to find your way around our archive).The beautiful music in the video is by my friend, the incredible singer/songwriter friend Brianna Lane, and we are so grateful to her for generously permitting us to use her art.
We’re also so thankful to our Writing in the Dark community members who shared thoughts to help us make the video. We hope to link to the other many beautiful things you said that didn’t fit in this short clip for a more robust testimonial page coming soon. Thank you!
And this super short nut-and-bolts video tutorial shows you how to use the Writing in the Dark homepage and find stuff you’re looking for, including how to navigate our ever-growing Curriculum Index. Because our archive, including curricula from past seasonal intensives, is a big part of your value here, and we want it to be as easy as possible to dive in. We will link that video tutorial in this welcome post, which itself will be pinned to our homepage. (Always building the ship as we sail it, and I’m not a shipbuilder or a sailer. Thanks for your patience & love.)
And … since this will be our new pinned post, please introduce yourself in the comments!
You can tell us where you live, what you write, and why you’re here … or just say whatever feels right to convey who you are. After all, as one of my mentors, Paul Matthews, reminds us:
The Troubadours in the South of France in the 12th century played a literary question and answer game called the “jeu-parti”—the “divided game.” From this comes our [English] word “jeopardy,” meaning danger. It is a marvelous root—that in the midst of our word play we might be confronted unexpectedly by a real question so that our whole being stands before a creative risk, a jeopardy, to be faced directly or shied away from … where suddenly the game requires quite another level of meaning. Such moments in the writing nearly always have something of the question, “Who are you” buried inside them. Without that fundamental question, in fact, no real conversation is possible, and yet we spend so much of our lives talking about other things in order to avoid it. When, however, that question is faced, the possibility of poetry arises.
So, welcome, welcome, welcome … and who are you?
We really want to know.
Hello Jeannine and Billie. Thank you for this super clear definition of writing in the dark: embracing uncertainty!
I’m Don Boivin and I write Shy Guy Meets the Buddha, vulnerable biographical narratives with a mindfulness theme.
Good to be here!
Hello! I'm still fairly new and so excited to be here. I'm just beginning to write again as I recover from some serious health issues and adjust to the weird new world of living in a chronically ill body. I still haven't worked out the elevator pitch for my newsletter, but here are some words, anyway: I write about art and storytelling, intimacy and the erotic, power and culture, and the disruptive experience of illness. I'm interested in how the unruliness of our bodies, and of lived experience, can disrupt our paradigms and expectations, forcing us to recalibrate and make new meaning.
See? That's not really an elevator pitch yet. Still very much in the mess of it all.
I'm also sort of working on a memoir. I have a background in feminist theory, journalism, fiction writing, and general rabble-rousing. So happy to be here, excited to work on craft and build community!