🧵 Thursday Thread: WITD CLASSIFIEDS
If you like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain ... just kidding (sort of) because you never know what you might find in the classifieds. Let's find out, with kindness and joy.
Yay! It’s time for the fall edition of the WITD CLASSIFIEDS!
We’re excited to do this again! The WITD Classifieds idea emerged during a summer Live Salon (the open mic readings at the end of The Visceral Self, when writers wanted a way to connect and find/share resources and links to each other’s published work, services, etc., and
& I said to each other—hey, WITD can help with that!).Our last edition, here, was a lot of fun.
And here are some examples of what you might post in WITD CLASSIFIEDS:
Offers of specialized services you offer free or at a low/reasonable cost: This can be professional or not—everyone is an expert at something, whether it’s resume writing, copyediting, dog training tips, navigating insurance fiascos, downsizing, trail running, etc. etc. What’s your superpower and can you share it? Please let us know!
Celebrations: Did you publish some new work lately? Or do you have other things going on that you’re excited about? we want to know! Are your tomatoes amazing this year? Did you finally clean out your basement, start a podcast, finish a knitting project, cut your own hair, launch a kid off to kindergarten or college, house train your dog? Tell us so we can clap for you.
Stuff to give or sell: You’ll have to specify whether you can mail it or not and who pays postage, but this could be a fun and valuable info exchange. And Guess what? I’m told you can create an image using Imgur, so if you can figure that out, all the better!
Reading/Writing Groups or Manuscript Swaps: Obviously this one makes all the sense, but please do use common sense and caution (see note below on critiquing!). This kind of thing can happen on Zoom, by email, or in person, depending, so you may want to state your preference.
Whatever else seems to fit: Be creative. We are open-minded, as long as it’s not icky!
Speaking of icky, nothing icky: We don’t expect that here, but obviously, we’ll delete if we need to.
One last note:
Let’s not use the WITD CLASSIFIEDS solely to post links to our latest Substack posts. Why? After all, we love Substack! But … posting mostly links to Substack posts will soon turn the Classifieds into something else, maybe something like another version of Substack Notes, and we already have Notes.
That said, if you have a post you’re super excited about—it was a milestone in some way, such as being your first post, or a viral post (however you define that), or your 10th or 50th or 100th post, etc., or one that took extra courage, etc., then, yes, we trust your good judgment to share it. We want to celebrate you.
Otherwise, let’s keep CLASSIFIEDS for the the stuff that is a bit more specific, particular, and wouldn’t really fit anywhere else.
Here are WITD CLASSIFIED guidelines to make scrolling easier and more efficient—to make the section most usable:
Every month or so, we’ll use a Thursday Thread to host WITD: THE CLASSIFIEDS section paid members.
Classified postings should be direct asks or offers for products, services, in-person meetups, writing groups, book clubs, exchanges & trades (work to read, services, etc), recommendations, questions, announcements, requests/ISO (in search of), etc.
Please follow the below convention when posting/replying:
Original posts should:
Begin with [ALL CAPS OFFER OR ISO + CATEGORY] for example:
[ISO MINNEAPOLIS BOOK CLUS]
[OFFER WEBSITE DESIGN SERVICES]
[ISO EDITING SERVICES]
[ISO MANUSCRIPT EXCHANGES & TRADES]
Include any helpful & necessary links
Location / best way to contact if relevant
Two other important headers that fall outside of OFFER or ISO are ANNOUNCEMENT and CELEBRATION. See #6 below.
Replies should:
Indicate clearly if you are interested in the same service [DITTO] + any other info you want to add
If you are able to meet the need [ANSWER] + info on how you can meet or address the OP
Please do not limit yourself:
a. The categories we’ve suggested are just a beginning. But you might have lots of other ideas, and you need not limit yourself to writing-related topics, either! Maybe you make clay pots that you sell on Etsy. Maybe you do tarot readings, or are searching for a good astrologer. Maybe you are wondering about a good veterinarian in the Cincinnati area. Maybe you are in desperate need of a page-turner novel for an upcoming flight to Boston. Maybe you just binged The Bear and are wondering if anyone wants to discuss season three. Maybe you need a perfect recipe for bread pudding (in which case, Emily has you covered). Please feel free to post what you have to offer or wish you could find—as long as it’s legal, safe, and kind. Let common sense and good judgment be your guides, please.
Know that WITD cannot endorse any service or goods offered in THE CLASSIFIEDS. It’s just another way for all of us to connect with each other! Both buyers, sellers, traders, and recipe-makers must use their own judgment.
Again, do feel free to use THE CLASSIFIEDS for celebration posts, if you have a significant publication to share (see note above about not posting all of our most recent Substack posts here—please use your best judgment to discern what’s appropriate, we trust you), a recent win, or any other good news. We love celebrations!
Don’t PANIC about our formatting guidelines and conventions. This is not brain surgery and nothing is going to go terribly wrong if you mess up. Everything is in service of making the section easier to scroll and use. You can’t go too far wrong. We’ll all be fine. We promise.
Share Your Ideas, Too, Please!
We’re open to your input and suggestions as we build this feature out into a meaningful way for members of our WITD community to find and get to know each other through local meetups, reading/book groups, and other social endeavors, as well as lots of other ways of connecting and exchanging knowledge, energy, wisdom, goods, and services.
There is no rule against self-promotion in the CLASSIFIEDS, so, again, you are free to share your latest successes or services or new Substack features, etc., as long as you think it is a relevant, valuable contribution to the section and the community.
Feel free to be creative—as we know you are! We can’t wait to see what you have to offer.
A Word About Reading/Critique Exchanges
[I won’t repeat this section every single time we do CLASSIFIEDS, but I do want to repeat it the first couple of times. Feel free to skip if you’ve already read this and feel comfortable and confident in this area.]
Once WITD: THE SCHOOL starts, we’ll be devoting real-time discussion to the considerations we recommend when seeking feedback on your work-in-progress. For now, we just want to note briefly that your work is valuable, it matters a lot where/from whom you seek feedback, and we do have strong ideas and principles on this issue. You of course are free to follow your own instincts, but I do plan to share some of my own thoughts about feedback in a forthcoming Lit Salon post and then again, in more detail, during SCHOOL.
The short version, in the meantime, is here (excerpted from this longer post on The Very Bad Writing Workshop (& What To Do Instead):
I counsel my students to be very careful with their work, to treat it with the respect it deserves. I mean, consider what George Saunders said to Jane Ratcliffe about sharing work and feedback:
“I don't show anybody. I’m even a little superstitious about it. I don't like to talk about what I'm working on or share with anybody because this process has taught me that there's so many layers to the subconscious. It's so smart but also kind of shy and if you start interrupting it, like, ‘Jerry said this,’ the subconscious goes, ‘fuck you. Why are you asking Jerry? I know. You just have to be patient with me.’”
In this vein, I—when students are eager to get “feedback from others” on their work in progress—sometimes ask them, “Would you seek someone’s advice on your roof installation if they were not an experienced roofer?” Or, “Would you ask someone to diagnose a skin growth if they were not a doctor or dermatologist?”
Why do we ask for feedback on our work with such little discernment of whether those giving the feedback have the prerequisite skills? Simply being an aspiring writer (or an avid reader) does not automatically prepare someone to get under the surface of someone else’s manuscript, let alone help identify how to solve any problems and meaningfully improve the work.
“So,” I advise my students, “make sure that before you ask for feedback on your work, you’ve considered whether the person or people providing it are highly qualified to do so—and that the work is ready for feedback in the first place.”
What If I Can’t Imagine Ever Posting Anything in THE CLASSIFIEDS?
Great question. I sometimes receive beautiful emails from introverted writers asking whether they can get value here even if they only “lurk,” work independently, and not force themselves into the participatory waters of community.
And my answer is a resounding yes.
I am no longer as shy as I once was, but as a child and teenager, I suffered from selective mutism!! I know what it feels like to be quiet. I know what it feels like to stand back and watch. I wrote about the value of honoring our need to hover on the periphery last week, in this post: “How To Be A Writer (Even If You Lurk)” in case you missed it.
The upshot is, we hope THE CLASSIFIEDS will be fun to scroll even for those who never post—and who knows, you might just find something there that catches your eye.
Let’s have fun. Thursdays are a really good day for joy. I can’t wait to scroll THE CLASSIFIEDS.
Love,
Jeannine
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