At some point in January I crossed the threshold of one thousand subscribers. It’s a feat I’ve dreamt of but never really conceptualized. Truly, I am honored.
Along with this has come reflection on my writing journey. Amid the reflection, I realized that the last time I formally introduced myself and my writing story in this space was March 1st, 2020 (wild timing, I know). That was almost four years and over six hundred subscribers ago.
Perhaps it’s time for a writerly reintroduction; a statement of purpose, perhaps.
An industry of clickbait
It was 2016, and I was trying to break into the writing world. I was in school studying the Christian publishing industry and learning how important it was to grow a platform: people told me I needed ten thousand followers to get a book deal. To do that, I learned I needed to get my writing placed in publications online. And the publication of the moment, for Christians in their twenties, was Relevant Magazine.
I wrote a piece that I thought was a banger. It was about youth pastors named Todd who point out their “smoking hot wives” in the audience and then talk about sex. I named it “What I Learned from Pastors with Smoking Hot Wives.”
I sent it to Relevant and my hunch was correct—they wanted it! They emailed me when it went live, and when I logged onto the site, this was the title I saw:
Woah. “Everything My Church Taught Me About Sex and Marriage Is Wrong” is extreme. My mom, not knowing the title, sent it to the entire pastoral staff at our church. Whoops.
But I gained like fifty Twitter followers, and at the end of the year it was one of Relevant’s best performing pieces. Every few years Relevant repackages and republishes it like it’s a new article, most recently last March. Something must have worked.
An industry of controversy
Around the same time that Relevant published my article, I developed a website and named it Drew Brown Writes. I purchased a Squarespace subscription and asked a photographer friend of mine to take quirky author photos of me so that I could drape them across the site. Here’s an example of one of them (capris! barefoot! head turned!):
I wrote words and created articles and thought of catchy semi-clickbait-y titles and shared those semi-clickbait-y titles on social media for people to click and spend time reading. Many times I leaned into controversy on purpose. It looked like thinking of pithy putdowns to my ideological opponents or writing articles that were a bit more extreme than I needed them to be.
That method of self-promotion proved to be effective. My platform began growing quite a bit, and I began making a very small name for myself in very specific, niche, Christian Twitter circles.
After a while, however, I was exhausted and anxious. I was living my life in a virtual world that dictated my moods; dominated by the questions it produced:
Did I choose the right title?
Did a theobro just publish an article that I could slam and gain some favorites and retweets from?
Did I post enough creative content for my followers for the week?
In my pursuit of a book deal, I lost my mental health.
Clickbait controversy isn’t Christianity.
“One grows so tired, in American public life, of the certitudes and platitudes, the megaphone mouths and stadium praise, influencers and effluencers and the whole tsunami of slop that comes pouring into our lives like toxic sludge.”
-Christian Wiman (Zero at the Bone, 30)
That article I wrote does not, in fact, say that everything my church taught me about marriage and sex was wrong. It does not. Nothing like it. However, each time someone clicks that link expecting something incendiary, they read a milquetoast article which fails to deliver on its title.
Clickbait controversy, by definition, promises more than it delivers. When clickbait controversy is attached to Christianity, it subliminally does two things at the same time:
It communicates that Christianity does not deliver on its promises and
It portrays Christianity as unnecessarily confrontational and extreme.
It is corrosive. It tears apart. It is a narcissistic chest beating—a man yelling in a crowded theater and inciting a riot just to be heard, just to be noticed, just to have five seconds of attention.
But we can’t ignore the reality that it works. If you want to grow a platform quickly, you can build it on the back of clickbait controversy. It’s a psychological cheat code, and as long as it exists there will be people utilizing it for their own gain.
Another way forward
In 2019 I decided to just stop. I decided to no longer aim for clickbait, to no longer court in controversy.1 I shuttered Drew Brown Writes and started this Substack. I have stopped pitching to Relevant and have opted to follow the rhythms of life rather than the fickle, always-demanding, never-enough arithmetic of the internet. My Twitter is dead and my pieces are more nuanced, gentler, less loud.
I feel like I can breathe.
The downside is that growth has been a certain slowness. A book deal is still most likely a long ways off.2 The former way of gaining subscribers is still more efficient, but—pardon my boldness—I think this way of writing is more wholistic, more aligned with the way of Jesus.
I debated whether to share about passing that one thousand subscriber mark. It felt a little show-boaty. But I think it is helpful to share because it is important to show that growth is possible. It is slow, for sure, but it is still growth.
I see it as writing—and maturing—at the pace of life. Organic. Sustainable. Freely limited.
A poetic conclusion
There is a little girl—three, maybe four—dancing in the sun splaying through the coffee shop window. I sit at my little table with my little books and my little laptop and this little newsletter transfixed by her. Her blond curls bounce as she tries to hold her balance in a one-legged dip. She spins, holding her hands above her head, letting the sun bleach her with nourishment.
Today in church my pastor spoke about Christianity being odd in its moreness. It is more than our senses can handle, and all-to-often we try and dilute it down. We try to handle it—with care, maybe—but still we think it can be handled. But still, it is more.
A friend told me as I was walking out of church after that sermon and into the sunshine that this past January was the second-cloudiest January on record for my little corner of Michigan. The sun only shone for six minutes the entire month.
Clickbait controversy is just cloud cover for a blazing sun, and I believe we are all little girls hungry for one spot of sunshine rather than the endless empire of clouds. Christianity is sunshine; it is always more than we can imagine.
I am not interested in dampening that moreness for the sake of an empire.
A postscript
Last week I turned my paid subscriptions back on. I’m learning it’s okay to admit the work that goes into each one of these pieces, and I am growing more comfortable believing this work can be compensated in some way. If you have a few extra bucks a month, I’d be honored if you decided to support this newsletter. However, I also completely understand if you are already tapped out. I’m grateful you are here!
I should clarify that sometimes truth is controversial. For example, in a world that denies the dignity of Black bodies and ignores the reality of systemic racism, to say that Christianity cares about these truths is controversial and good and right. Jesus flipped tables. But when we use controversy as a growth-tool, something is wrong.
If you are a publisher reading this and would like to prove me wrong, feel free to comment (lol).
This is good. Thanks so much for sharing and affirming that indeed we do not have to. 🙏🏼
The weary world rejoices at hope that isn't hurried, harsh, or heavy-laden. Thank you for this, and congratulations!