Housekeeping! How Does This Substack Thing WORK?
Emails vs. the Actual Site - and navigating
This is a screen shot of the actual site of The Unschool newsletter as it appears on Substack. Some of you may have never seen this. Some of you may have only ever seen and read the posts as email that falls into your box every five days or so.
If this is true for you, read on. You’re missing Things.
** And if you need only a re-fresher for how to access the workshop space and how to build your own mini-course/focus, scroll down to the bottom of this piece.
I suspect that for those who regularly navigate social media and other internet pieces, it’s become second-nature to click on titles and links and likes…
But it has come to my attention that many Unschoolers simply read the emails as they arrive and are unaware just how to navigate to the site of Substack. I imagine that if you read an email some months ago, and would like to revisit, it’s a challenging mess. Yet right on the “home-page” are the indexes, which could take you quickly and easily to any archived post… if you knew how to get there. I sympathize; I struggle with internet navigation frequently!
Before I go any further, here is my email: alison@alisonacheson.com
Always, if you have any questions not only writing/publishing related, but also related to anything-Substack—how to find your way, how to deal with IT issues, payment issues, anything, please send me a note.
Directions
I post pieces as newsletters on the Substack site, and send them to subscribed individuals. You.
The Unschool archive of these pieces automatically happens, in which the posts are organized in a reverse-chronological thread as below. You can scroll through, looking for what you want. But you have to know how to get to the site! And scrolling can take too long when you are looking for something in particular. Read on…
You can go to the home page—and I’ll tell you how—and check out the lower right-hand corner to locate the annual indexes. More on that, too, below… I’m pasting in these screen shots so you can become familiar.
How to access the newsletter site from an Unschool email
There are several ways.
Click on the title of the article.
Click on the heart-shaped “like” or comment button—next to the heart.
Many of my emails/posts have links to archived pieces, and when you click on one, that will also take you to the post as on the site.
Other ways to access
You can go directly to Substack.com, and if you remember your password, you can access that way, with a search for Unschool for Writers or my name. (If you’ve lost your password, click on the appropriate button. Use something easy to remember.)
Advantages of accessing FROM THE SITE
It’s all there, at your fingertips. You’re not looking through old emails. With site access, the Unschool becomes interactive and you can create your own mini-courses of study and focus. Often an article can be re-read months later, for a deeper exploration.
Review the first screen shot I’ve posted in this piece.
Under the Unschool for Writers title, there are four sub-titles:
Home / The Unschool Workshop Space / Archive / About
“Archive” will take you to the aforementioned chronological listing (most recent first), and in the upper LH corner you’ll see three divisions of:
New / Top / Discussion
‘New’ is the latest. ‘Top’ is popular posts (though I must admit, this looks really random to me!), and ‘Discussion’ take you to discussion threads as well as the comments-section on posts.
“About” takes you to some most basic and useful things to know about The Unschool, everything from subscribers’ reviews, to pricing, to “why?”
The “Workshop Space” can only be accessed if you are a paid subscriber AND if you’ve registered to take part in it. (Registering is easy. See below, where I’ve shared all the details.)
When you open this area you’ll find a number of posts where Unschool writers have shared work for feedback and offered feedback. Even if you’re not ready to post your own work, this can be a piece of learning—to review others’. Feel free to go in and learn! (Ask questions—either of me, to my email, or directly into the comments on the pieces. In my experience, if the question is in your mind, it is also in others’ minds! Questioning is useful all around.)
On the “Home” page, some of which I’ve spoken to above, again three buttons:
New / Top / Community
‘New’ is most recent. ‘Top’ is “popular.” And ‘Community’ is about discussion threads and comments—the pieces that allows you to share and communicate.
Also on “Home,” there is a “pinned” piece at the top—usually a piece that is either the latest or—I hope—thought-provoking.
Off to the right-hand side of the Home page are my recommendations: these are other newsletters that I follow for various reasons, and I think they might interest you. (I only include those I read on a regular basis.)
And below that is the section called “Unschool Community,” which includes my thoughts on “Unschooling,” subscription info, a link to the “About” page again, and then the Indexes.
I know I go on and on about the indexes (!) but they are significant. Indexes are broken down into topics. Some articles I list under multiple topics, such as the recent “Power of Three.” It went under both “fiction” and “writing for young people.” I’ve written about how you can use the indexes to create mini-courses for yourself—below are details on that.
Two Extra Pieces:
How to create a personal “course” at The Unschool for Writers
Note: this is taken from the June 1, 2022 monthly pot pourri.
We’ve had a number of new subscribers join us here. I’ve had both old and new subscribers ask about how to navigate the site as a “course,” and truth is, it’s not a “course” per se.
My posts are as eclectic as my publishing, and run from picturebook-creating to adult memoir, and all between.
Even with courses and intense programs, writing will always be a self-motivated act, and learning the how and why of it is, too. Short of being J.K. Rowling, having to cough up book #7, with millions awaiting, no one will demand of you that you sit and create. That piece is up to you.
Key to learning and growing is to create solid work habits, and to be open to what it is that your WIP—work in progress/process (I prefer the latter)—is demanding of you.
I have a theory that the story that pops or fights its way into your mind and heart is the one you are (almost) ready to write. Later, as you learn, other ideas will come to you, each seeming to ramp up the writing challenge, each with its own set of questions and troublesome points. Always—it doesn’t matter how much you come to know about this work—there are new pieces to learn.
You grapple with issues of “craft” as well as with the questions both intellectual and emotional that come with the story-at-hand… and you learn. This process of coming to recognize what are your QUESTIONS is the path to your growth.
When I began to write fiction, after years of journal-writing, I struggled with dialogue. I read about writing dialogue, and I also sought out novels, and studied the dialogue in them, at points even copying it, re-typing it to get a feel for the rhythm, to try to absorb some of the writer’s thoughts in the process (process, not progress…)
From there, once I felt I’d learned something about dialogue, I realized how it is birthed of character, and I spent time studying “character.” I self-assigned myself tasks—like reading through all of Sharon Creech’s works. I made this choice because I loved how she portrays characters on her pages. I decided to start with her first-published book, and work through chronologically, purchasing the books and taking a pen to all note-worthy bits I found in them. Real studying! With this approach, I followed her growth as a writer, too, and I found this allowed me some room for patience with my own growth—it can be overwhelming to begin to read a writer at the peak of their career and knowledge.
Such self-assigned pieces work; they guide you to self-diagnosing and articulating your points-to-grow. They get to you right where you are… and on to that increment just ahead, where you want to be as a writer.
Here’s where The Unschool comes in.
There is an index for each of the two years of this work, for 2021 and 2022. These are broken into topics—fiction writing, writing for young people, books on writing, the business of this work… and more.
You can choose a topic or thread of ideas, and begin to read through. You can take your time and absorb an idea. If you are a very new beginning writer, you can check out the “foundational” series, and work from there, with the ideas of keeping a journal, reading as a writer.
If you feel a need for encouragement or a sense of “how does this writing thing function in my life,” then check out the “writing life” pieces. There are also monthly prompts, and these sections do not disappear. You can write to a prompt and post in the the corresponding monthly-prompt thread, and receive some feedback. Even if it was a month in last year!
The archive is now a collection of hundreds of pieces, and I continue to post regularly. If you don’t find a post that helps with your particular question, know that I’m happy to respond and share thoughts and possible answers to any writing-related question! Some of the most useful posts are born of your questions.
Accessing the Workshop space and taking part:
First, registering:
As a paid subscriber, click on your icon in the upper RH corner.
Click “manage subscription”
Check the box for “The Unschool Workshop Space” under “newsletter notifications”
And you’re in.
To take part:
Email me your work, and I will post it in its own thread: alison@alisonacheson.com
The maximum word counts:
600 for picturebooks
1200 for fiction or non-fiction scenes
poetry - no more than one poem at a time, no more than one page
And let me know any (or none!) of the following:
Genre:
Word count:
What draft is this? First and rough? Fourth and moving toward “polished”?
Where are you at on your writing path? Beginner? Experienced/published? Muddling?
What sort of feedback are you looking for? (Review the stop-light red, gold, green idea I posted in the April 1 newsletter, for example.)
What questions do you have? Or do you want to include them at the end of your piece?
Review the recent workshopping post on offering feedback, and making this process useful.
~~~
Last note
I have to admit that it’s distressing to think that some of you cannot find your way around and get as much as possible out of the work that I do here. The Unschool is so much more than emails.
Do ask questions! The button should surely be “Leave a question.” Consider it so.
Oh wow, this was useful, because it alerted me to the fact that I should figure out how to do something similar for my own subscribers! Given that I post every day, I know that it is very difficult for someone who might want to go back and look for something like one of my father's poems I've published. The solution I've come up with is to create tabs, one for his poetry, one for the posts I call Historical Tidbits, and one that I just created called the Authors Corner where i have posts directed at providing advice to authors. But I doubt whether very many, if any, of my subscribers know about these tabs.
In addition, I usually go to my inbox to read other people's posts, so I haven't spent any time looking in detail at someone else's home page. Therefore, I loved finding out about the index you created. Perfect for me to look through some of the posts (like who and that!) before I start on my major rewrite. Grammar in particular has never been my strong suit (my major professor didn't give me a grade on my first paper, making me rewrite before I turned it in, he also gave me Fowler's Modern English Usage book when I passed my orals...hint hint.) And, because most of my career I wrote non-fiction, I never did have any experience with dialog--so that one I really had to learn. Anyway, thanks so much for this.
Happy 2023, Alison!
Good, clear advice. I've come to the conclusion that, no matter what I write, no matter how I encourage interaction, most of my subscribers will simply read the current email. At least, the stats indicate that's what they're doing.
Then I find there's a whole bunch (well, a small bunch) of peeps who've been listening to my podcast via various apps, including my biggest and most loyal 'day job' client, and I was unaware of it for months, as they haven't signed up to my Substack.
When I feel frustrated by all this, as I often do, I look to my own online activity and ruefully admit: I'm exactly the same, well-intentioned, but continually distracted by new bright, shiny things.
I hope to spend more time here in 2023.😊