Writing in the Dark with Jeannine Ouellette
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A newsletter for people determined to keep creating through relentlessly uncertain times. Source
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| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesAll creatures know love.
All creatures know love. All creatures. I’ve thought of this line almost every day for several years. It started while I was preparing to teach an animal writing class on Zoom (held jointly between my students at Shakopee Prison and a group of outside writers from Writing in the Dark). I was reading a lot of books featuring animals, one of which was Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy. It’s a novel about a biologist who studies wolves and reintroduces wolves to their natural habitats.
Gertrude Stein was particularly inspired by the traffic on busy Parisian streets. Automobiles stopped and started with a rhythm that thrummed right into her prose. ~Celia Blue Johnson
Path through the fields from Momoyogusa–Flowers of a Hundred Generations (1909) by Kamisaka Sekka Teachers of children use outdoor sensory paths to offer fun opportunities for kids to explore and build sensory connections in the brain. Depending on how the paths are planned, these outdoor walks can help kids build spatial awareness and balancing skills while also immersing them in a variety of tactile sensations.
The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. ~Albert Einstein
Vintage red flower drawing, remixed from artworks by Samuel Colman Today’s creativity prompt explores how we perceive time and how we work with and render it on the page—or, more specifically, today’s prompt brings our conscious attention to time.
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
Twee zilverreigers (1878–1905) by Theo van Hoytema Week Two! We’ve already finished seven days of the 30-Day Creativity Challenge! If you have not joined us yet and want to, you can absolutely access the numbered prompts in the archive and work at your own pace. You are never too late. Meanwhile, to launch week two, we begin with questions.
A collage can be made of found objects, or a combination of objects and the artist's own drawing. [Writers] perform a similar act ... [with] scattered pieces of language. ~Heath Guide to Literature
The Man of Confusion by Paul Klee Once you start using literary constraints to crack open your writing, you may find that you begin to see new ideas for constraints all around you. You may also begin finding your own inventive ways to impose creative limits as a means to deepen and expand your writing practice. If so, you will be joining the ranks of some of the most creative minds in history.
The stories we tell ourselves hold tremendous power over who we become and how we live. The least we can do is be conscious of them.
Nude Study (1900) by William Orpen Dear Readers, I hope you enjoy this incredibly thoughtful interview about writing, trauma, and doorways with Shauna Gilligan, whose intimate and insightful questions allowed for a truly beautiful conversation. The interview first appeared on Shauna’s blog in 2021. Ouellette’s debut memoir, The Part That Burns(Split/Lip Press, 2021), was included on The Rumpus’s Most Anticipated for the first half of 2021.
In the midst of our word play we might stand before a creative risk, a jeopardy, to be faced directly or shied away from … where the game requires quite another level of meaning. ~Paul Matthews
Joyful Mountain Landscape by Paul Klee Day 6, and we’re going to talk about how limitations can be paradoxically playful, and how that serves our creative capacity. The exercise is oddly simple but not easy. I will be curious to see how it goes for you. For me, these kinds of exercises produce various results on a time-by-time basis, but the cumulative benefits of repeating such exercises for more than a decade now have been immeasurable.
Writing Prompt: Chords and Cacophonies
For tomorrow’s prompt in the 30-Day Creativity Challenge, we’ll be playing with limitations as a portal to creative discovery. And today’s Wednesday Writing Prompt (sent to all subscribers, paid and free, as a gift) provides something of a preview for tomorrow’s work by exploring the energy and possibility within a single, unbroken sentence.
The pieces (and only the pieces) ... begin the creative process for me. And the process by which the recollections of these pieces coalesce ... is creation. ~Toni Morrison
Mallard, the head under water (1900 - 1930) by Ohara Koson Welcome to Day 5 of our 30-Day Creativity Challenge! I hope that by dipping into these exercises—whether you have spent a little time or a lot, whether you have completed all, some, or only part of one—you have entered April with more creative awareness and awakeness than you might have otherwise. And if for any reason you have not yet begun any of the exercises, don’t waste a second berating or regretting.
The Surprising Sound of Mary Oliver's Voice
Oak and Evergreen (1880–1890) by Samuel Colman First, I apologize for being a couple of days late on this March Writing in the Dark newsletter! I started teaching two new classes in March (Writing for Public Health at the University of Minnesota and The Urgency of the Short Form at Stillwater Prison), and, between those endeavors and AWP and the April 30… Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to Writing in the Dark with Jeannine Ouellette to keep reading this post and get 7 days of...