Writing in the Dark

I've been reaching out to some friends and acquaintances about pulling together a writing circle. In theory it would give participants some structure to help schedule their writing habits, folks to bounce ideas off of, and other creative fuels. Creating a web presence of some sort that would allow people to work together on projects in a pseudo peer-to-peer way might be a nice addition to the writing circle. In that regard, I'm somewhat anxious to improve my meager web design/development skills.

I think one's writing can garner traction within the illuminated zone of a specially purposed social network.

However, I think that those people can only enjoy that illumination if they have done plenty of writing in the dark beforehand. By my own definition, writing in the dark involves the creation of large sums of text for the purpose of impressing no one, approaching only yourself as an audience, and existing for it's own sake. Journals, list making, outlines, world building and so forth, writing in the dark has many contrived titles. In the end, you are generating text within a context that does not include external illumination.

A truly great writing project is born of internal illumination after much of this writing in the dark. Try it. You'll see what I mean.

Preparation. Forethought. Taking notes. Call it what you like when you're sitting with your peers or your friends.

... but know it for what it really is.