Offering #33: Writing in the Dark
slow times, hard times + BOOK RECS!
✨ Planting Pages: What to Write (and Read) When You’re in the Dark
Hi all! This is the space I post each Full + New Moon— read below for a New Moon reflection for writers navigating uncertainty, depression, and the invisible work of creation.
The New Moon is a time of beginnings, but it can also feel like nothingness. In this post, I share a mindful writing prompt for when you're feeling stuck or low, a few soul-nourishing craft books (some weird and witchy, others practical), and a reminder that writing in the dark is still writing.
🌑 🌑. 🌑
The New Moon is a blackout. No light in the sky, no clear way forward. It's the part of the cycle where we're meant to rest, reset, begin again—but sometimes it just feels like fog. Like depression. Like nothing is working. Like, why even write?
But the dark is not the enemy. It’s the soil.
Just because no one can see your writing—or your joy, or your grief—doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Something is always happening beneath the surface. Even when it hurts. Even when your brain is fogged up and you’re too tender to read your own sentences. This, too, is part of the creative process.
So if you’re in an emotional dark right now, scroll down for a gentle invitation, prompts and a poem-gift:
What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
-Valarie Kaur
🌑 Mindful Writing Prompt:
1) What is trying to grow in the dark?
Write for 10 minutes, no pressure, no editing. Use pen and paper if you can. Let it be messy. You can always fix things later.
📚 Craft Books for Writing Through the Fog:
These are the books I reach for not when I want to write better, but when I need to remember why I write at all.
The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo – for writing through life’s real stuff: grief, illness, confusion. It’s patient and kind.
Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle – part craft, part poetry, part hallucination. For when you want permission to be a little feral.
The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner – half writer pep talk, half editor brain. This book will teach + care for you.
Wintering by Katherine May – a tender, lyrical reminder that dark seasons are part of life and creativity. For when you need permission to rest, retreat, and trust the quiet. I just reread this and felt fed.
Bonus: a hot bath and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. still hits.
🖤 For Those in the Dark:
You don’t have to be healed to be creative. You don’t have to be happy to write something true. And you don’t have to be visible to be valid.
If you’re moving through something—depression, burnout, heartbreak—you’re not alone. The act of showing up to the page, even just to say “I’m tired,” is a kind of magic.
And remember—-books are friends, not to be cheesy—-reading can keep us company, offering a room in the mind when we need it. I’m sharing one of my favorite poems below that’s kept me company in the dark.
AND…EVENTUALLY….AFTER THE DARK COMES LIGHT:
(you are the light)
🌱 What About You?
What’s something invisible in your writing life that you want to nurture this moon cycle?
Reply and tell me. Or don’t. Write a weird poem. Go to sleep early.
This is your permission slip to be exactly where you are.
🌱 A Closing Poem-Gift! (and one of my favorite poems by a fave poet)—-
In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
🌑 🌑 🌑
NEW CLASS ALERT! IF YOU WANT TO NOURISH YOURSELF + DEEPLY WRITE:
Calm Down Club: 8 weeks of generative writing, restorative yoga, breathwork, lessons on the energy body in the yoga tradition and how understanding that invisible but FELT part of us can help us CREATE WITH TRUTH. Sliding scale. July 6- August 24th. Online. This space is women/ female-only this time around. Join us! (or message any Qs)