Writing in the Dark's New Design!

And a short story about Olivetti typewriters and the beautiful mess of imperfection

We’re so excited to announce Writing in the Dark’s new illustration-based design, created by

Billie Oh

with help from their big brother, Max, and lots of never-ending wishlist requests from me.

To explain the new design, here’s a story (and by the way, please notice and applaud our new WITD dinkus below!).

About 15 years ago, I bought a used red Olivetti valentine typewriter on Ebay. It was beautiful. The idea was, I wanted to type letters to my oldest daughter, who was off at college. I thought having a real typewriter—like I had when I was in college myself—would make it more fun to write to her, and that for her, receiving those typed letters would be somehow so much better than the texts and emails we otherwise constantly exchanged.

It felt so perfect.

My red Olivetti typewriter which currently does not work

Well, I still have that red Olivetti typewriter, and it’s still beautiful. But I never actually finished a letter, because the typewriter never really worked. Something about the ribbon. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed.

Maybe this year I finally will.

Or maybe I won’t.

I don’t know. I have an awful lot on my plate. My life is a big mess of ongoing imperfection.

But it’s still beautiful.

And something about this story really gets at the heart of Writing in the Dark, where we celebrate the always imperfect process of making art. The messiness of it. The way it almost never goes as planned, the way it never lives up to our perfect idea of it. Because perfection is a myth.

What’s better than perfection, however, is aliveness. And aliveness is not a myth. Aliveness is about the way making art is a negotiation between us and the art itself. Art lives in the space between our ideas and our ability to bring them into being. And there’s always a gap. But as artists, our job is to keep narrowing the gap as best we can, because there’s something about art and truth, and it’s important and worth it.

Our new design is similar: imperfect, alive, not quite ready, and under ongoing construction. Still, we feel these original illustrations better capture the essence of Writing in the Dark for a few reasons:

• First, because Billie’s illustrations are personal and made in direct response to the words they illustrate, and in collaboration with my ideas about those words.

• Second, because—as mentioned—the illustrations are imperfect, ever-evolving, and subject to ongoing revision, just like good writing.

• Third, because we can plant Easter eggs for you as the seasons change and various happennings unfold in our lives and in the world of WITD.

Ultimately, the truth is that as we revise our art, we revise ourselves. It’s pretty simple, never easy, and always worth the effort, even if things don’t turn out the way we hope.

That’s the gist of our new design.

We really hope you like it.

Love,

Jeannine & Billie

In case you’re new here, Billie is my youngest adult child, and single adoptive parent to our youngest grandchild, Z. Billie is my right-hand person here at WITD. 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 occasionally share their own work on trust fall on Substack and publish things other places, but right now that is pretty infrequent given the whole full-time parent full-time working thing.