Dark Writing

We do not see empty figures and outlines; we do not move in straight lines. Everywhere we are surrounded by dapple; the geometry of our embodied lives is curviform, meandering, bi-pedal. Our personal worlds are timed, inter-positional, and contingent. But nowhere in the language of cartography and design do these ordinary experiences appear. This, Dark Writing argues, is a serious omission because they are designs on the world: architects and colonizers use their lines to construct the places where we will live. But the rectilinear streets, squares, and public spaces produced in this way leave out people and the entire environmental history of their coming together. How, this book asks, can we explain the omission of bodies from maps and plans? And how can we redraw the lines maps and plans use so that the qualitative world of shadows, footprints, comings and goings, and occasions—all essential qualities of places that incubate sociality—can be registered? In short, Dark Writing asks why we represent the world as static when our experience of it is mobile. It traces this bias in Enlightenment cartography, in inductive logic, and in contemporary place design. This is the negative critique. Its positive argument is that, when we look closely at these designs on the world, we find traces of a repressed movement form. Even the ideal lines of geometrical figures turn out to contain traces of earlier passages; and there are many forms of graphic design that do engage with the dark environment that surrounds the light of reason. How can this "dark writing"—so important to reconfiguring our world as a place of meeting, of co-existence and sustaining diversity—be represented? And how, therefore, can our representations of the world embody more sensuously the mobile histories that have produced it? Dark Writing answers these questions using case studies: the exemplary case of the beginnings of the now world-famous Papunya Tula Painting Movement (Central Australia) and three high-profile public place-making initiatives in which the author was involved as artist and thinker. These case studies are nested inside historical chapters and philosophical discussions of the line and linear thinking that make Dark Writing both a highly personal book and a narrative with wide general appeal.

With more than a hundred published novels and more than seventeen million copies of his books in print, USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith knows how to outline. And he knows how to write a novel without an outline. In this WMG Writer's Guide, Dean takes you step-by-step through the process of writing without an outline and explains why not having an outline boosts your creative voice and keeps you more interested in your writing. Want to enjoy your writing more and entertain yourself? Then toss away your outline and Write into the Dark.

In this comprehensive textbook devoted to the craft of writing horror fiction, award-winning author Tim Waggoner draws on thirty years' experience as a writer and teacher. Writing in the Dark offers advice, guidance, and insights on how to compose horror stories and novels that are original, frightening, entertaining, and well-written. Waggoner covers a wide range of topics, among them why horror matters, building viable monsters, generating ideas and plotlines, how to stylize narratives in compelling ways, the physiology of fear, the art of suspense, avoiding clichés, marketing your horror writing, and much more. Each chapter includes tips from some of the best horror professionals working today, such as Joe Hill, Ellen Datlow, Joe R. Lansdale, Maurice Broaddus, Yvette Tan, Thomas Ligotti, Jonathan Maberry, Edward Lee, and John Shirley. There are also appendices with critical reflections, pointers on the writing process, ideas for characters and story arcs, and material for further research. Writing in the Dark derives from Waggoner's longtime blog of the same name. Suitable for classroom use, intensive study, and bedside reading, this essential manual will appeal to new authors at the beginning of their career as well as veterans of the horror genre who want to brush up on their technique.

"In the spirit of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, Friedman...gives heartfelt counsel to those who need to be coaxed into the creative process."--Washington Post An indispensable guide for writers that explores the emotional side of writing and offers insightful advice on overcoming writer's block, procrastination, guilt, and more. Charting the emotional side of the writer's life, Writing Past Dark is a writing companion to reach for when you feel lost and want to regain access to the memories, images, and the ideas inside you that are the fuel of strong writing. Combining personal narrative and other writers' experiences, Bonnie Friedman explores a whole array of emotions and dilemmas writers face--envy, distraction, guilt, and writer's block--and shares the clues that can set you free so that you can write the book you've always dreamed of writing. Supportive, intimate, and reflective, Writing Past Dark is a comfort and resource for all writers.

Bestselling author Max van Manen’s Writing in the Dark brings together a wide range of studies of relevance to qualitative researchers and professional practitioners. Each of the sixteen original chapters by accomplished scholars serves as an example of how a different kind of human experience may be explored, and of how the methods used for investigating phenomena may contribute to the process of human understanding. Van Manen provides the opening and closing chapters for the book, and also an introduction to each selection. This book is a valuable and rich resource for people who would like to learn more about phenomenological reflection and writing.Van Manen and his contributing authors:-Show how the challenge of doing qualitative research can be pursued through the process of inquiry, reflection and writing-Are from a variety of fields such as education, health sciences, psychology, arts and design, communication technology, and religious studies-Include numerous recognizable human experiences including common ones, forgotten ones, and ritualized ones

Throughout his career, David Grossman has been a voice for peace and reconciliation in the Israeli-Palestinian divide. In this groundbreaking collection of essays on literature and politics, he addresses the conscience of present-day Israel, a country that has lost faith in its leaders and its ideals. Writing in the Dark ends with the speech in which Grossman famously attacked Israel's disastrous Lebanon war that tragically took the life of his twenty-one-year-old son, Uri. Moving, brave and clear-sighted, these essays on literature, political ethics and the morality of the imagination are a cri de coeur from a calm voice of reason at a time of doubt and despair.

A profound book of essays from a celebrated master of the form. “Darkness is not empty,” writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanity—and witness the humanity of others—in a time of darkness. One of the most celebrated essayists of his generation, Cole here plays variations on the essay form, modeling ways to attend to experience—not just to take in but to think critically about what we sense and what we don’t. Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole’s writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about blackness and its numerous connotations. As he describes the carbon-copy process in his epilogue: “Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white sheet. Black transported the meaning.”

If you read only one book on business writing, make it this one. Chapters by the twelve partners of the Dark Angels Collective set out a comprehensive approach to writing more effectively for business. For nearly twenty years the Dark Angels programme has been championing the cause of more human, more emotive writing in the business world – because it’s this kind of writing that works, in branding, in copywriting, in writing for design, in annual reports, in all genres and all sectors. The Dark Angels approach is to draw on techniques from fiction, poetry and memoir to tell better stories – stories that connect with readers across all commercial media. The results, endorsed here by many of the most respected writers in the field, are gathered in this book as an indispensable source of inspiration and practical advice. It’s the book that sets the new benchmark for professional writers.