So you want to write online?

Thoughts on writing and platform growth

“Pastoral Scene with River,” circa early 19th Century

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing over the past few months. A few weeks ago I hosted two “Anti-Viral Christian Writing Workshops,” and I’ve since gotten to talk with two different writers about their growing Substacks. As an aspiring writing coach, my heart is very full at this moment.

So, without further ado: thoughts on writing online (with assistance from Wendell Berry’s essay, “Blessed are the Peacemakers”).

Writing arrogantly

“Anybody half awake these days will be aware that there are many Christians who are exceedingly confident in their understanding of the Gospels, and who are exceedingly self-confident in their understanding of themselves in their faith. They appear to know precisely the purposes of God, and they appear to be perfectly assured that they are now doing, and in every circumstance will continue to do, precisely God’s will as it applies specifically to themselves. They are confident, moreover, that God hates people whose faith differs from their own, and they are happy to concur in that hatred.”

-Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers, 49

The old way of gaining an audience was to be voracious at social media and use controversy or outrage or shock to convince someone to follow your stuff. It meant posting controversial articles with controversial titles.¹ And there was very little room for gray. It was all confident people confidently telling other people why they were wrong.

Those people are idiots.

Here’s a thousand and one reasons why I’m right.

If you agree with me, then you are going to heaven. If you don’t, you’re screwed.

Imagine Mark Driscoll and his schtick. That style of in-your-face confidence (read: arrogance) found followers.

It still does. If you want to gain an audience quickly (on Substack or elsewhere), just be outraged and confident (again, read: arrogant).

Writing humbly

“Our darkness, then, is not going to be completely lighted. Our ignorance finally is irremediable. We humans are never going to know everything, even assuming we have the capacity, because for reasons of the most insistent practicality we can’t be told everything. We need to remember here Jesus’s repeated admonitions to his disciples: You don’t know, you don’t understand; you’ve got it wrong.”

-Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers, 58

There is another kind of writing, something I think Substack does a great job of encouraging. In this form of writing, you are rewarded for writing good, true, authentic pieces of work, work that is neither reductive or demanding but is instead expansive and thoughtful. It is clinging to faith with fear and trembling; it is seeing in a mirror dimly; it is about discovering a God who keeps our tears in jars.

Can you be confident? Yes! We are called to be confident in Christ. I can confidently tell you that I believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But does that mean I contain all answers? No!

All I’m saying is that there’s a way to gain a platform as a Christian by writing with honesty and integrity, not just machismo and bravado.

Writing simply

“It is a mystery that we are condemned but also are highly privileged to live our way into, trusting properly that to our little knowledge greater knowledge may be revealed. It is this privilege that should make us wary of any attempt to reduce faith to a rigmarole of judgments and explanations, or to any sort of familiar talk about God. Reductive religion is just as objectionable as reductive science, and for the same reason: Reality is large, and our minds are small.” (emphasis mine)

-Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers, 59

A sustainable form of writing (and living), I believe, is light on “rigmarole of judgments and explanations” and heavy on humility. And the privileged mystery we are called to “live our way into” is that life and this world are far higher and wider and longer and bigger than our minds can contain.

What does this mean, practically? It means you can write about your “small” life; God has given you enough to write about. You can write about your house, your church, your town. You can write about the ways God is showing up in your life, and you can write about the incessant questions that come with being alive. This world is bigger than we can imagine, so writing about your corner of the world can become as extensive as you are willing to make it.

I’ll say it again: God has given you enough.

Writing abundantly

“When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly, this, I think, is the life He means: a life that is not reducible by division, category, or degree, but is one thing, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material, divided only insofar as it is embodied in distinct creatures. He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal.”

-Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers, 66

Finally, I believe that writing sustainably as Christians means we do not need to be bound by the labels the industry often wants to place on us.

Remember Max Lucado’s You Are Special? The Wemmicks walk around handing out stars to the privileged of society and gray dots to the outcasts. The main character is covered in gray dots until he goes to the Creator and learns he can live without any stickers—stars or dots.²

Society and the industry constantly want to put utilitarian labels on us. They wanted me to name my blog “Single and Anxious,” chiseling me down to those two monikers. They may want you to be a mommy blogger or deconstructionist or motivational speaker. I don’t know. The easiest way to grow a platform is to narrow yourself into a stereotype, to take a sticker from society and live within that framework.

But I believe God does not ask us to reduce ourselves or our lives as writers.³ For those of us whose main subject is ourselves—for us bloggers and memoirists and narrative nonfictioners—we can pursue something broader than words that are “reducible by division, category, or degree.” No, we can show up online as “one thing, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material.” We can be embodied as “distinct creatures.”

Because when we show up as whole, we allow others to do the same.

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Finally, an example of a writer doing all of this

Dear reader, please meet

Grace Leuenberger

, who writes Thirty-Something:

She is one of my favorite people on Substack and writes with courage and grit and grace. She is well worth a subscription!

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1. My personal favorite was a writer who wrote a piece called “Why I’m Divorcing My Wife,” and it was actually about how he was divorcing the thought of divorcing his wife.

2. If you’ve never read the book, please find a copy and read it. It’s still one of my favorites.

3. Some of you are experts with PhDs on a specific subject—that’s different. Write about your subject to your heart’s content!