What Does It Mean To Write In The Dark?
Here's what we do here, where to start, how to get the most from the posts + even 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
What am I thankful for as this year draws to a close? You. All of you who make up this incredible community.
To those who’ve been here a while,
& I thank you for sharing your beautiful writing, your valuable time, your warm hearts, your fascinating thoughts (you’re all so smart), and your tears and laughter. We love you.To those who are new—and there are a lot of you! welcome!—we’re really glad you are here.
And this archival 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).
We thought with the influx of new subscribers, recirculating this FAQ would be helpful—and if you have more questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
What does it mean to write in the dark?
Writing in the dark means 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. 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.
Fore more detail, this WITD intro video tries to sum up what we do—and you can introduce yourself on that post, too! And these short videos/audio love notes from WITD members also give a sense of this place. And we have that About Page that we’re always rewriting. One thing we’re not is static.
Oh, and our writing exercises! We’re big believers in writing exercises, because to really do language, to really stretch language to its edges and discover what it can actually do, the secrets it holds, we need to get messy. We need to write messy things that surprise us, that push us out of our comfort zone and allow us to take risks on the page without looking over our own shoulder to make it “perfect” before it even exists.
Nothing is more limiting than avoiding risk on the page for fear of making a mess. Making a creative mess by doing “exercises” (i.e., letting the creative spirit come first instead of our need to make it sound good) 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 a creative advice column + essays on the creative life + occasional essays/stories/poems or poemish things submitted by WITD readers. These reader-submitted essays must be written in response to a WITD exercise and we pay $50 for them! 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, those themed posts and exercises are really dynamic! People share snippets of their work from our writing exercises and the comment threads are often hundreds of comments long. It’s really fun!
Thursdays we do community Threads, which are also super fun. A recent one was on quirks.
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 wants to become more aware of language and how it fundamentally alters the course of your life will feel at home here. 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.
calls WITD “better than an MFA” and also included me as one of her top creative writing teachers on Substack. And here you can find a Big, Beautiful Directory of Work Born in WITD.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! We promise. At WITD, you’re never late and always enough, and there is no pressure. The content is there for you whenever you have the time for it. 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 here, and we can never really get to it all, but that’s okay. It’s comforting to know it’s always there when we need it. And if you love language and deep conversations about what it means to be a human being, you will probably love what you’ll read here. Laura McKowen of Love Story said WITD was like Mary Oliver and Rilke had a brainchild.
As for the writing exercises, they are intensely powerful, but there is no deadline for completing them. WITD is a choose-your-own adventure kind of place. That said, we hope you’ll try out some of the exercises, because they will for sure change your writing and even your life if you do them regularly—I know this because I hear it all the time. The exercises go beyond writing because they emerge from the belief that writing = life, which I have written about here. I get asked about the exercises a lot, including recently in the Substack Visionary series.1
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. Just yesterday a WITD writer told us that she has never in her entire life experienced the kind of community she’s found her over the last year. And she’s not the only one. This is a profoundly beautiful creative community.
Do I have to do the writing exercises?
No! The exercises are totally optional. They’re powerful, transformational, and 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.
Here’s a message we got yesterday from a free subscriber—one of many we receive regularly. We want everyone to find value and feel valued here, and we appreciate our entire community with all our hearts.
Do you really pay for stories and essays?
Yes! 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. For an example of one of my writing classes, see the description of “The Feeling of What Happens: Advanced Techniques for Writing that Stirs Emotion” (and our nine-month program, WITD: The School, registers in the spring and starts in the fall, just like real school). This space, right here? This is a newsletter and a vibrant community. But … 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.
Here’s how one person described their experience recently:
We’re super happy about this. WITD 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, like this writer whose schedule is jammed.
I don’t get your founding level—what’s the difference between founding and paid?
Our founding level offers 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
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?
is my youngest adult child, and single adoptive parent of our youngest grandchild, Z. Billie is my right-hand person here at WITD, and they do all our illustrations. 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, 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.
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!
I love this, and you. I will say, that for me, writing in the dark has meant living more and more in the light. What a gift y’all are. 💜
At the first writing conference, I attended there was an author who said she quite literally put on a eye mask and typed her work in the dark in her basement. I’m glad we don’t have to go to that length to be able to tap into the creative spirit.