#Substack Mastery Community

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Why I Wrote the Substack Mastery Book & How Can Freelance Writers Benefit from It Now

This unique book is an informative, educational, and inspirational source for writers who want to start a Substack newsletter, build their audience, and grow with a supportive community.  One of the best ways to communicate and disseminate information, knowledge, and expertise is through writing a book, which is challenging for authors. Books never die, but they evolve in new forms that appeal…

[ellery-james-roberts]

Afterwards part 10.

so to bring this cascading stream of consciousness to some conclusion, I will offer a few parting remarks. WU should always remain unannounced. May this book become a magickal act of healing and redemption, a work of Art in itself. I am ever grateful for these recordings or I would have forgotten the power our young hearts were capable of expressing. I listen to these half baked WU2 demos now and see beauty waiting to be finished- suddenly I want to sing on them; to see what they may become. I feel the potency is still there, yet to be captured. I know we spoke on playing together again and there was not any real enthusiasm- it is true, "We could not recreate what we once had" - But what intrigues me is not nostalgia but how we would play these songs now, with all we have learnt, with all we have become. I know in many ways I sacrificed that potential a decade ago, but the path I have trodden has brought me back to the start.

 And so I put this letter out openly into the world as an act of courageous, perhaps foolish, transparency- an attempt at heart opening communication. If it reads as the ramblings of some self-righteous narcissist prone to heretical pretension then I have evidently missed the mark! Forgive me, I am still learning! I claim no mastery, only a commitment to practise & devotional trust in my own experience of Self. Perhaps fittingly I will end this with the timeless words of some anonymous sage;

The Mountain is the Mountain  & the Path Remains the Same  Verily, it is only my Heart  That has Changed.

I affirm this with the entirety of my being

Peace, Peace, Peace to all beings, everywhere

purchase LYF Archives book

Read / Listen in full on Substack

...............................................

[philologikal]

On Autism; or, Why I Should Have Been an English Major

[This essay was originally published on my Substack in October of last year.]

I love poetry. I don’t necessarily mind whether a poem sounds good, but what I love about it is how poets have shown stunning mastery in the art of paying attention. The poet holds a matter close to their eyes, turning it around and around until every detail is revealed to them. If that were not impressive enough, the poet also masters the art of communicating what they’ve learned to the rest of us—I don’t think it’s an accident that prophecy is the largest source of poetry in the Bible. That communication demands the poet’s full attention, from their choice of words, how many syllables they apportion to each line, even occasionally how the stanzas sit upon the page to commend themselves to our eyes in just the right way. In short, I most respect poets as masters of attention.

***

The average lifespan of an autistic person is 36 years. The unluckiest of us might be killed by parents or caretakers fed up with it all. Those of us lucky enough to get past that may still, for any number of reasons, take that matter into our own hands. Even among those of us who live to this day, I am yet to find another autistic person and grow close to them without discovering that they, too, considered it seriously at some point. It seems like everybody near to autism reckons with the notion that being autistic is as good as being dead.

Where does that notion come from, and why do so many people, even autistic people, find it so convincing? It isn’t very far away from any of us. The idea of autistic inhumanity lies in wait within our language and thinking of autism as pathological, as a disease. People “suffer” from autism, which is marked by “symptoms” comprising their “inability” to meet developmental milestones or to refrain from behaviors deemed unseemly according to our standards of what is typical. Well-meaning doctors advise well-meaning parents to take their child to a certain kind of corrective therapy, which, in reality, attempts to traumatize the atypicality out of them.

Treating autism as a disease is one thing while one thinks it can be cured. Deadly trouble arises when one figures it out as an inextricable part of their identity: then, the autistic person is seen as not a person at all.

Autistic people can be celebrated despite all this, but only in very specific circumstances. The “model” autistic person is a STEM savant, far exceeding their neurotypical peers in mathematical or scientific acumen so that the few quirks they struggle to suppress are forgiven, far outweighed by their utility to our common cause of scientific progress. Dr. Temple Grandin, through no fault of her own, is hoisted up as the face of respectable autism, because she can fit this mold relatively well. Comparatively, that’s not a bad deal: most “model” autistic people are only fictional characters created by neurotypical writers (think Rain Man or, more recently, The Good Doctor). We are human only insofar as we channel in some exceptional way the ideal Scientific Man; every other aspect of our complex personhood can either be ignored or acknowledged as the great hurdles that we overcome to become useful.

These acknowledgments and criticisms are analyses of language and diction or close readings of narratives; in other words, they are the fruits of methodologies one would learn in any good university English program. They are the fruits of poetic attention, which, ostensibly, autistic people aren’t supposed to have, being so singly designed for STEM.

***

Before college, I wanted to be an engineer. I was great at math and especially good at chemistry, so I thought that these were the things I had to do. I was occasionally fascinated by other subjects, but they never stuck as career aspirations. As far as I knew, I simply wasn’t built for them.

High school is a difficult time for most people. It is a time of often awkward character growth and a growing sense of independence. Being autistic, I grew more awkwardly than most. As independence dawned upon me, even in the tiniest flecks of light, the only thing it illuminated in me was a profound sense of undeserving incompetence. When I reached out to peers beyond shallow niceties I could never follow through, or when I tried, I often harmed them.

The trope that autistic people don’t care about other people’s feelings is very false; I cared very deeply about them, at times more deeply than was helpful. That care manifested in feeling a duty to defend others from myself. At some point, I resolved never to have biological children—I not only embraced the pathological narrative of autism, but a firmly eugenical one, which I hasten to add is never far away from the pathological. When enough tragedy, mistakes, and resentment entered my life, the eugenical turned suicidal. That my body did not resign itself to being found washed up dead on a beach in the Outer Banks is a mystery I do not, probably cannot understand.

What I do know is that it occasioned a dramatic shift in priorities. The experience of hanging over death, held up only by an ineffable, alien power and resolve, prompted surprising forays into spirituality, which culminated into my faith in—or really, my rapport with—Jesus Christ, the Commiserative God. I abandoned STEM altogether because I realized that no matter how good at math I may be, it mattered that I really disliked it. I, therefore, applied to and attended a liberal arts school instead. I took classes I liked, made friends, fell in love, and imagined all to be well.

None of that changed the fact that I am autistic. I still stumbled and all too often brought harm and damage with me when I fell. I let friends down, exhausted the ones I loved, and of course, did myself no favors. I had decided to ignore my autism—it was still a disease in my mind, but perhaps a tolerable one—but it made itself known, if not always to me then to others.

I majored in religious studies and loved it. I wouldn’t change that now, and in fact, I would change none of the things in this story. But what if, instead, I majored in English? What if I had learned about the art of poetic attention or to close-read a classic novel, finding in all I read hints of the human condition? What if I practiced articulating my most subtle thoughts between the lines of artful prose, rather than simply recording my matter-of-fact observations of things?

If nothing else, it would have saved me the time of trying to learn all that now.

***

William Blake thought that all people shared a universal Poetic Genius, which he identifies as God. The neat thing about Christianity is that we believe the whole universe is manifest in the nit and pick, dirt and grime, and every jot and tittle of the human life of Jesus Christ. Poetic Genius is universal, but it is what it is only in its perfect attention to the smallest, most particular particle of detail. Every one of us participates in it, not through the airy world of abstractions and spirits but in our most concrete particularity, our most unique selves.

The trick, then, is to understand autistic people as part of that universal humanity and artistry: not just the most palatable parts of us, but all of us whole and entire. Jesus said to do unto others what you would they do unto you. He made no exception concerning autistic people, yet we act as if he did. As a society, we need to value listening to autistic people, not just their families or the few we find respectable.

Of course, to be heard, autistic people must understand and speak. We are among the people who need to learn that we can listen to us. We are no more mere STEM tools than any other person. All of us (including those of us in STEM!) must take hold of the Poetic Genius, which is ours by right, which has always been ours. We must cultivate our own poetic attention, which is as unique as we each are. Out of that awareness, we can tell the world that we have gifts to give them, indeed, that we have been given to them and they to us by God. We can know in our inmost hearts that we have been given to ourselves, autism and all.

I am, so to speak, the “chief of sinners” in respect to this awareness. I thank God for those who have come before me and spoken. I pray that I, too, may be given the strength to do the same; I have much to learn.

I am autistic. Though I didn’t major in English, I love poetry. And there’s nothing odd about that at all. It could save somebody’s life.

Appendix: Autism, Sex, and Race

There are a few extra things I feel must be said about autism and neurodiversity as it intersects with other markers of identity.

When I was a child, I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. As far as the DSM is concerned, such a thing hasn’t existed since 2013. It is now part of a big-tent diagnosis called Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD. The language of “disorder” may still be unfortunate for reasons explained above, though I am willing to concede that autism poses challenges that warrant solidarity with disability movements. In any case, this change of classification signals an important shift in our understanding and observation of autism in some key ways.

Many people see autism as a disorder for young white boys. There have always been exceptions, but recently we have figured out that they aren’t as exceptional as we thought. We are becoming more aware of how autism manifests in women and the general disparities whiteness imposes on medical care. But when it comes to autism, I have a hunch that these advances will only be incidental until we disabuse ourselves of the autism-as-pathology mindset, with which whiteness and patriarchy are inextricably linked.

That claim might seem bizarre, but bear with me.

When we feel we have detected some deficiency in a child, we do so by seeing them in contrast to a standard or expectation we hold to. If we think the Ideal Human is white and male (as is so often the case, even implicitly) then aberrant behavior in young girls or non-white children can be satisfactorily explained by the fact that they aren’t male or aren’t white. But when we encounter such behavior in white boys, we have to look elsewhere to figure out the problem. As it happens, the “problem” is sometimes autism. We see it in these boys because we feel a need to explain why they, who in demonic imagination are the ideal children, depart from that ideal. Girls and non-white children, under the conditions of whiteness and patriarchy, don’t stir such a necessity; in other words, we just don’t look.

An essential part of spreading poetic attention to autistic people is openness to learning from every kind of autistic person—especially if their existence challenges our inner narrative about what autism is for us. I wager that autistic people can likely identify traits of autism in the overlooked better than a neurotypical person can. At the very least, speaking what we know to be our realities might help neurotypical people identify it in its variations elsewhere. But in every case, whether we are neurotypical or autistic, we must dispense with our biases, because we all have something to learn about autism.

[xtruss]

Why We Are Still Living in Ronald Reagan's America

— By H.W. Brands | Newsweek | July 28, 2021

Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories. As president he told one to a convention of Protestant ministers, about a preacher and a politician who died on the same day and were greeted by St. Peter at the gates of heaven. Peter explained heaven's rules and escorted the newcomers to the homes they would occupy for all eternity. The preacher's proved to be a single room with a bed, table and chair. The politician's was a huge mansion with handsome furnishings. The politician was grateful but puzzled. "How do I deserve this grand place while that good man of the cloth has to live in a single room?" he asked. Peter replied, "Here in heaven we have plenty of preachers. You're the first politician to get in.”

It was Ronald Reagan's catchphrase first: Let's Make America Great Again. Michael Evans/The White House/Getty

The humor was vintage Reagan, not side-splitting but good for a chuckle. It flattered his listeners while deprecating himself, the only politician in the room. It caused people to think he was a friendly fellow, one they could get along with. People liked Reagan, even when they didn't like his policies.

Humor and amiability weren't the only reasons Reagan was the most successful president of the last half-century, in terms of putting his ideas into practice. His good timing helped, too. Reagan became president in 1981, when Americans had grown weary of a government that had been expanding incessantly since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s. Reagan announced, in his first inaugural address, that "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," and his words summarized what millions of Americans were thinking. They applauded his tax cuts and efforts at deregulation, and they reelected him overwhelmingly in 1984.

Reagan writing his 1981 inaugural speech at his home in California. Dirck Halstead/Getty

Reagan's timing was right in another sense, as well. Until the 1960s, the Republican and Democratic parties had each been a coalition of conservatives and liberals. Liberal Rockefeller Republicans coexisted with conservative Goldwater Republicans; conservative Southern Democrats shared their party with big-city liberals. Things changed when Lyndon Johnson made civil rights a Democratic cause; those conservative Southerners began to leave the party for the Republicans. As they arrived, they pushed out the liberal Republicans, who found their way to the Democrats. The process took a full generation, culminating in the 1990s, after which liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats were essentially nonexistent.

LBJ’s civil rights initiatives led conservatives to flee to the GOP, which helped Reagan win election. Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty

Reagan became president midway in the transformation. This was crucial to the success of his administration. Reagan was a conservative but a pragmatic one. James Baker, Reagan's chief of staff and then-Treasury secretary, recalled, "If Reagan told me once, he told me fifteen thousand times, 'I'd rather get 80 percent of what I want than go over the cliff with my flags flying.'"

Reagan believed that the purpose of getting elected was to govern, not to score political points. He met regularly with Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, and the two thrashed out com- promise after compromise: on taxes, on welfare, on Social Security, on immigration, on defense. Bolstered by defections from O'Neill's own party—conservative Democrats who hadn't completed their long march to the Republicans—Reagan usually got his 80 percent.

Timing helped in foreign policy, too. Reagan had been an ardent anticommunist from his days in Hollywood, when as head of the Screen Actors Guild he struggled to keep communists out of film-industry labor unions. He rejected the containment policy of his White House predecessors in favor of a strategy designed to win the Cold War. He built up America's defenses and threatened to take the arms race into outer space with the Strategic Defense Initiative. He dramatically stood at the Berlin Wall and challenged the Kremlin: "Tear down this wall!"

Reagan in Berlin, famously imploring the Kremlin, “Tear down this wall!”. Thierlein/Ullstein Bild/Getty

Yet Reagan's actions had scant effect until changes in the Soviet Union produced a reformist leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, willing to deal with the U.S. Reagan met with Gorbachev, developed a personal relationship, and proceeded to negotiate historic arms control agreements. The Cold War didn't end until after Reagan left office, and its peaceful conclusion required adept diplomacy by George H. W. Bush.

But Reagan rightly received much of the credit, for his adroit combination of threat and accommodation. Reagan left behind a different world than he had inherited. Some of the changes were positive; others were not. Reagan's critique of big government caught on until even Democrat Bill Clinton felt obligated to announce that "the era of big government is over." Deregulation facilitated dramatic changes in the economy, including democratization of air travel, globalization of production and supply chains, and the digital revolution that continues today.

Reagan toasting his partner in Cold War reform, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at a meeting in New York City. Corbis/Getty

Yet the post-Reagan economy favored the few a great deal more than the many, producing inequality not seen in America since the Gilded Age. Globalization aggravated the deindustrialization of America and made supply chains sensitive to unforeseen disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic. The digital revolution spawned corporate giants with unprecedented reach and influence.

Reagan was a decent and temperate man, who chose his words carefully. Those who came after him were not always so circumspect. Combative Republicans dropped the qualifying clause—"in this present crisis"—from Reagan's assertion that government was the problem, and mounted an unrelenting attack on Washington D.C., treating defenders of government programs as the enemy of the American people. Donald Trump rode the rhetoric of attack into office; in Trump's last days as president, the attack on government turned physically violent.

A crowd of supporters at a re-election campaign for President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush. Dirck Halstead/Getty

The Republican party of Donald Trump is not the Republican party of Ronald Reagan, but there is a recognizable lineage. Reagan was not a racist, but by invoking "states' rights" as justification for his conservative policies, he let Southerners who were racists know they'd find a home in the Republican party, where Trump has done little to make them feel unwelcome.

Republicans have been slow to criticize Trump, even when he has egregiously overstepped what many of those Republicans once considered the bounds of decency and presidential decorum. To some degree their reticence reflects the partisanship produced by the elimination of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. But it also follows the example of Reagan, who articulated what he called the Republican Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." (Trump himself flouted that rule.)

The Republican party of Donald Trump is not the Republican party of Ronald Reagan, the author says, but there is a recognizable lineage. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

Trump took one page directly from the Reagan playbook. Reagan was called the "great communicator" for his mastery of the dominant medium of his day, television, which allowed him to speak directly to the American people without the filter of reporters and editors. Trump adapted the idea to the age of social media. His millions of Twitter followers got their daily dose of Trump undiluted, unchecked, and unrefuted—until the company pulled the plug on his account. In perhaps the most important respect, though, Reagan's core values were strikingly at odds with those common in his party— and often in America at large—today. Reagan lived through some of the most trying periods in American history: the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the turbulent Sixties, the unsettled Seventies. Yet he never lost his faith in the country's future. Reagan was the eternal optimist on everything essential about America.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease a few years after he left the presidency. But still his faith held firm. "I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life," he wrote in a farewell letter to the American people. "I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."

— H.W. Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas-Austin, is the author of Reagan: The Life and other books on American history. He writes "A User's Guide to History" at Substack.

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Featured Newsletters by Substack Mastery Boost Pilot: Episode 14

Curated Newsletters Curated newsletters of writers contributing to the Substack Mastery publication on Medium to create synergy Dear Writers and Readers, Happy November, we were unable to post curated newsletters in October as we were busy with the design and testing of our new Substack Mastery Boost pilot. As announced by our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz (Main) yesterday in the monthly…

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November Is a Special Month for Freelance Writers on Substack

In just the past three days, my paid subscribers have increased by 30% — all without any extra effort or marketing on my part. The best news is that I didn't know about most of these new subscribers before. 

Here’s how you can take advantage of this unique and subsidized offer. In just the past three days, my paid subscribers have increased by 30%  without any extra effort or marketing on my part. The best part is that I didn’t know about most of these new subscribers before. Substack took care of the heavy lifting. I now want to share this incredible opportunity with more writers. This is your…

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Onboarding New Writers Joining ILLUMINATION Publications Today: Episode #76

Welcome and a quick acknowledgment of your acceptance to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium with helpful links to our resources If you are a non-member writer, please review this important bulletin using the free versionto understand the rules of our publications for smooth publishing. New writer applications to Illumination are via our registration portal. Please review our quality…

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Why I Will No Longer Make Amazon My Primary Book Provider — Despite My Affinity with the Company

A balanced perspective on the pros and cons of using Amazon KDP based on my recent experience that caused unnecessary turmoil in the digital space.

I explained my concerns and plans in an article on Medium.

You can find the summary of this book on Digitalmehmet.com

This best-selling Substack mastery book now can be purchased from prominent online book stores listed below

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Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 16

Sustaining Your Newsletters for Long-Term Success & Evolving with Your Audience & Community Around Your Work in 8 Steps This chapter is different from the previous ones. It was meant for an extensive conclusion with key takeaways, but after requests from most beta readers, I decided to publish its summary earlier. Many loved the practical tips in the previous 15 chapters, which they will find in…

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Medium Now Supports 77 New Countries, Including India

How can this milestone enhance inclusivity and diversity on the platform, making it more vital and sustainable and benefiting writers and readers around the globe? As a dedicated writer, reader, editor, curator, content strategist, and multiple publication owners on Medium, I am delighted and thrilled to share some incredible news highlighting the platform’s commitment to inclusivity, diversity,…

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Inspiration from Dr Gabriella Kőrösi

“Magic Is Present. An Introductory Story About Substack Mastery” Inspiring Words of Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi on Medium, Substack, and YouTube I have know Dr Gabriella Kőrösi for over 2 years now as she is part of ILLUMINATION’s editorial team. We also come from similar backgrounds as healthcare professionals. Her focus on addiction issues is commendable. Dr Gabriella always inspires us with her…

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Introduction to New Writers Joining ILLUMINATION Pubs Today #67

Welcome pack and a quick acknowledgment of your acceptance to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium with helpful links to our resources Non-member writers, please read this important bulletin using the free versionto understand the rules of our publications for smooth publishing. New writer applications to Illumination are via our registration portal. Please review our checklist and the…

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The Strategic Move: ILLUMINATION Community’s Commercial Arm for Charitable Success

The ILLUMINATION publications have been providing full free service to all community members, now made up of 32,000+ freelance writers globally through our volunteer workforce on Medium.com since March 2020. It has been an absolute pleasure for our team o

Discover the Strategic Benefits and Impact on Our Nonprofit Mission and Join Our Exciting Journey for Freelance Writers Globally Dear Writers and Readers,  Medium is a wonderful community and now we are integrating and enhancing its value it with Substack community to give a competitive advantage to our writers and delight our readers better with new synergistic input. Collaboration for writers…

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How I Made a Significant Progress on YouTube as a Mature Age Adult

Despite my constraints, how I gained over 60K subscribers in a year and coming to a stage near you My name is Lawson Wallace. I’m a 64-year-old guy from the United States with some chronic health issues, including dyslexia. I was also homeless once. In an inspiring moment, back on July 7th, 2022, I sat down with my old Surface Pro, turned on the webcam, and started messing around with making…

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Introduction to New Writers Joining ILLUMINATION Pubs Today #64

Welcome pack and a quick acknowledgment of your acceptance to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium with helpful links to our resources New writer applications to Illumination are via our registration portal. Please review our checklist and the onboarding pack before submitting your stories to our publications. How To Become A Writer For ILLUMINATION. You are welcome to join the…